Vision enhancement system for SAR based on infrared video

With the expansion of the transportation volume at sea, maritime search and rescue became an enormous task. To improve the rate of life saving, this paper puts forward a vision enhancement system based on infrared video for the maritime search and rescue. A method is proposed for detecting and tracking targets at sea. Based on the characteristics of infrared image and the sea environment, we combine the approaches of frame difference and target region-growth to detect and track targets. The image of the current frame is different from the previous one and the result is transformed into a binary image using threshold segmentation. Then the region growth algorithm is employed to mark the targets' position on the video. The experimental result shows that the system is suitable for searching the overboard personnel at sea.