A Fast Algorithm for Target Detection in High Spatial Resolution Imagery

Detection and identification of targets from remotely sensed imagery are of great interest for civilian and military application. This paper presents an algorithm for target detection in high spatial resolution imagery based on the spectral and the dimensional characteristics of the reference target. In this algorithm, the spectral and the dimensional information of the reference target is extracted automatically from the sample image of the reference target. Then in the entire image, the candidate target pixels are extracted based on the spectral characteristics of the reference target. Finally, groups of candidate pixels which form isolated spatial objects of similar size to that of the reference target are extracted as detected targets. The experimental test results showed that even though the algorithm detected spatial objects which has different shape as targets if the spectral and the dimensional characteristics are similar to that of the reference target, it could detect 97.5% of the targets in the image. Using hyperspectral image and utilizing the shape information are expected to increase the performance of the proposed algorithm.