Application of change detection to the detection of buried mines

Gary H. Price; Joel Kositsky

doi:10.1117/12.445524

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18 October 2001 Application of change detection to the detection of buried mines

Gary H. Price, Joel Kositsky

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Proceedings Volume 4394, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets VI; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.445524
Event: Aerospace/Defense Sensing, Simulation, and Controls, 2001, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

SRI International is investigating change detection for the US Army Night Vision Laboratory using a forward-looking ground-penetrating radar (GPR) sensor as a technique for monitoring cleared roadways against further emplacement of landmines. In the course of evaluating the utility of the technique against buried mines, we have noted that the sensitivity of GPR change detection appears to be sufficient to discern small changes in a scene (footprints, soil disturbance, etc.). Experiments have shown that this sensitivity can decrease significantly over a period of several hours. We have undertaken to learn whether this temporal degradation is because of system and processing artifacts or the inherent temporal change of the clutter field. We have found that the degradation appears to be related to a nonzero phase of the correlation peak observed when the 'before' and 'after' images are cross correlated. This behavior suggests that the images may be misregistered. A simple subpixel registration algorithm was formulated to correct the misregistation. The differencing of two nominally identical images finds the clutter suppression, as determined from the ratio of mean pixel magnitudes in difference and sum images, to have been improved by 7 to 10 dB following subpixel registration. In this paper we present results form recent experiments and improvements to our processing algorithms demonstrating the utility of GPR change detection.

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Gary H. Price and Joel Kositsky "Application of change detection to the detection of buried mines", Proc. SPIE 4394, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets VI, (18 October 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.445524

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