An airborne real-time hyperspectral target detection system

An airborne system for hyperspectral target detection is described. The main sensor is a HySpex pushbroom hyperspectral imager for the visible and near-infrared spectral range with 1600 pixels across track, supplemented by a panchromatic line imager. An optional third sensor can be added, either a SWIR hyperspectral camera or a thermal camera. In real time, the system performs radiometric calibration and georeferencing of the images, followed by image processing for target detection and visualization. The current version of the system implements only spectral anomaly detection, based on normal mixture models. Image processing runs on a PC with a multicore Intel processor and an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU). The processing runs in a software framework optimized for large sustained data rates. The platform is a Cessna 172 aircraft based close to FFI, modified with a camera port in the floor.

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