Infrared Patch-Image Model for Small Target Detection in a Single Image

The robust detection of small targets is one of the key techniques in infrared search and tracking applications. A novel small target detection method in a single infrared image is proposed in this paper. Initially, the traditional infrared image model is generalized to a new infrared patch-image model using local patch construction. Then, because of the non-local self-correlation property of the infrared background image, based on the new model small target detection is formulated as an optimization problem of recovering low-rank and sparse matrices, which is effectively solved using stable principle component pursuit. Finally, a simple adaptive segmentation method is used to segment the target image and the…