The small infrared target detection in complicated background based on adaptive morphological filter

The detection of small infrared target has always been a crucial but difficult issue in infrared target detection. An effective method using adaptive Top-Hat operator in morphology is proposed to detect small infrared target in complicated background. Firstly, adaptive Top-Hat operator is employed to suppress large areas of interference in complicated background. However, the gray of target is attenuated in the image after Top-Hat operation, which is disadvantageous to segment target area. Therefore, on the condition that small infrared target is not easy to be detected accurately, the image processed by morphological filtering is transformed by nonlinear gray stretching in order to increase the gray of small target. The result of transformation proves that this method not only enhances the gray of small target but also restrains the interference. In this way, target region can be segmented effectively. The effectiveness and accuracy of this detecting method is verified by the results of experiments conducted by the author.