SAR/IR sensor image fusion and real-time implementation

This paper presents a real time SAR/IR fusion system for automatic target recognition (ATR) applications. The system contains three major components: preprocessing, registration and fusion. The registration algorithm is based on Zheng-Chellappa's (see IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, no.7, p.311, 1993) APFBR work. The fusion algorithm employs a biologically inspired merging rule to carry out SAR/IR fusion at the pixel level. In the fused images, features from individual sensor images are not only preserved but also enhanced. The fused images are more suitable for visual perception and ATR operations. The system has been implemented on a SIMD parallel processor to achieve real-time performance. It has been extensively tested on real SAR/IR data.