An EO surveillance system for harbor security

Micro USA, Inc. has designed and built an Electro-Optical (EO) system for the detection and surveillance of submerged objects in harbor and open ocean waters. The system consists of a digital camera and advanced image processing software. The camera system uses a custom designed CMOS light sensor array to facilitate the detection of low contrast underwater targets. The software system uses wavelet-based image processing to remove atmospheric and ocean reflectance as well as other noise. Target detection is achieved through a suite of optimal channel prediction algorithms. The novelties of the system are (a) camera calibration routine to remove pixel non-linearities, non-uniformities and lens effect, (b) adaptive algorithms for low-contrast detection. Our system has been tested in San Diego harbor waters and initial results indicate that we can detect small (2 feet diameter), low-reflectance (5%) targets underwater to greater than 2 diffusion depth (DD). This diffusion depth translates to about 25 feet in harbor waters.