Region descriptors for automatic classification of small sea targets in infrared video

Martijn M. Mouthaan; Sebastiaan P. van den Broek; Emile A. Hendriks; Piet B. W. Schwering

doi:10.1117/1.3549907

1 March 2011 Region descriptors for automatic classification of small sea targets in infrared video

Martijn M. Mouthaan, Sebastiaan P. van den Broek, Emile A. Hendriks, Piet B. W. Schwering

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 50, Issue 3, 037002 (March 2011). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3549907

Abstract

We evaluate the performance of different key-point detectors and region descriptors when used for automatic classification of small sea targets in infrared video. In our earlier research performed on this subject as well as in other literature, many different region descriptors have been proposed. However, it is unclear which methods are most applicable to use on the type of infrared imagery as used onboard naval ships. The key-point detector should detect points of interest that can be used to effectively describe the objects in the imagery. On the basis of the detected key points, the descriptors should discriminate between different classes of small sea targets while being robust to differences in viewing conditions. We propose a similarity measure based on the distance between key-point location and the Euclidean distance between descriptors to quantify the similarity of images. For performance evaluation, we use the receiver operator characteristic as the criterion to rank the evaluated methods. We compare the Harris-, blob- and scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) detectors and the square neighborhood, steerable filters, invariant moments, and SIFT descriptors. We conclude that the Harris detector combined with the square neighborhood of size 19×19 or the SIFT descriptor results in the best classification performance for our data set.

©(2011) Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Citation Download Citation

Martijn M. Mouthaan, Sebastiaan P. van den Broek, Emile A. Hendriks, and Piet B. W. Schwering "Region descriptors for automatic classification of small sea targets in infrared video," Optical Engineering 50(3), 037002 (1 March 2011). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3549907

Published: 1 March 2011

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available