Infrared target extraction using weighted information entropy and adaptive opening filter

Abstract

In infrared (IR) images, near targets have a transient distribution at the boundary region, as opposed to a steady one at the inner region. Based on this fact, this paper proposes a novel IR target extraction method that uses both a weighted information entropy (WIE) and an adaptive opening filter to extract near finely shaped targets in IR images. Firstly, the boundary region of a target is detected using a local variance WIE of an original image. Next, a coarse target region is estimated via a labeling process used on the boundary region of the target. From the estimated coarse target region, a fine target shape is extracted by means of an opening filter having an adaptive structure element. The size of the structure element is decided in accordance with the width information of the target boundary and mean WIE values of windows of varying size. Our experimental results show that the proposed method obtains a better extraction performance than existing algorithms.