A high speed detection scheme for point targets in a multitarget environment

The purpose of this paper is to develop a high speed detection scheme for moving and / or stationary point targets in a multitarget environment as registered in an IR image sequence. An iterative approximate 3-D line searching algorithm based upon the geometric representation of lines (for non-maneuvering targets in space) in a 3-D space is derived. The convergency of the algorithm is proved. An analysis is performed of the theoretical detection performance of the algorithm. The statistical experiment results show high effectiveness and computational efficiency of the algorithm in the case of low SNR. The idea may be employed to satisfy the real-time processing requirement of an IR system.