Remote performance prediction for infrared imaging of buried mines

Kevin L. Russell; John E. McFee; Wayne Sirovyak

doi:10.1117/12.280905

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22 July 1997 Remote performance prediction for infrared imaging of buried mines

Kevin L. Russell, John E. McFee, Wayne Sirovyak

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Proceedings Volume 3079, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets II; (1997) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.280905
Event: AeroSense '97, 1997, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

IR imagers are being investigated by several groups for use in landmine detection. The ability to predict detection performance is necessary to establish confidence for single sensor systems or to allow appropriate weighting of detector output for data fusion algorithms in multiple sensor systems. Preliminary studies had shown that the in-ground vertical temperature gradient was a good indicator of mine/background contrast in IR images if temperature measurements and imager wee collocated and limited data suggested that remote performance monitoring might be possible. To establish practicality of remote monitoring, temperature probes were buried at 5 sites separated by various distance between 30 m and 5.8 km, in asphalt, sand and gravel, both on and off road. Vertical temperature profiles were automatically recorded at all sites simultaneously with IR images of buried thermal IR surrogate mines located at a gravel road site. The in-ground vertical temperature gradient was confirmed to be a practical indicator of the performance of an IR imager, for probes buried in all materials at distances up to almost 6 km from the imager. A five element probe with thermocouples uniformly placed at depths from -3 to -11 cm would be sufficient to predict detection performance.

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Kevin L. Russell, John E. McFee, and Wayne Sirovyak "Remote performance prediction for infrared imaging of buried mines", Proc. SPIE 3079, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets II, (22 July 1997); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.280905

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