Infrared Small Target Detection via Low-Rank Tensor Completion With Top-Hat Regularization

Infrared small target detection technology is one of the key technologies in the field of computer vision. In recent years, several methods have been proposed for detecting small infrared targets. However, the existing methods are highly sensitive to challenging heterogeneous backgrounds, which are mainly due to: 1) infrared images containing mostly heavy clouds and chaotic sea backgrounds and 2) the inefficiency of utilizing the structural prior knowledge of the target. In this article, we propose a novel approach for infrared small target detection in order to take both the structural prior knowledge of the target and the self-correlation of the background into account. First, we construct a tensor model for the high-dimensional structural characteristics of multiframe infrared images. Second, inspired by the low-rank background and morphological operator, a novel method based on low-rank tensor completion with top-hat regularization is proposed, which integrates low-rank tensor completion and a ring top-hat regularization into our model. Third, a closed solution to the optimization algorithm is given to solve the proposed tensor model. Furthermore, the experimental results from seven real infrared sequences demonstrate the superiority of the proposed small target detection method. Compared with traditional baseline methods, the proposed method can not only achieve an improvement in the signal-to-clutter ratio gain and background suppression factor but also provide a more robust detection model in situations with low false–positive rates.