Track Initiation for Dim Small Moving Infrared Target Based on Spatial-Temporal Hypothesis Testing

Track initiation for dim small moving target particularly in a heavy clutter environment is a theoretical and technological challenge for diverse tracking systems. The different spatial-temporal characteristics presenting in sequence scans are utilized to recognize target and initialize track in this paper. In spatial domain, the small target mapped in the image is a uniform gray spot other than pixel-sized object with high congregated degree, whereas, the false alarm is independent, irrelative and lower congregated degree. In temporal domain, the target’s trajectory projected on image sequence is continuous for the continuity of target motion and will appear in the neighborhood at consecutive instants with the maximum probability, on the contrary, the false alarm is disorderly, and occurs in the neighborhood at consecutive instants is impossible. Based on the spatial-temporal characteristics mentioned above, a track initiation algorithm for dim small moving target based on spatial-temporal hypothesis testing, which consists of neighborhood clustering and trajectory continuity, is derived and analyzed in detail. The theory analysis and experimental results show that this method could effectively initialize the track for dim small moving target in heavy clutter environment.