Isotropic surround suppression and Hough transform based target recognition from aerial images

Abstract

In this paper a procedure for target recognition of linear shaped landmarks (bridges and runways) from optical imagery is proposed. This study has done to propose a method for efficient target recognition as there is a need to have surveillance measures for defense, trade and disaster management. Keeping this in view, in this study image segmentation is performed using canny edge detection technique. Edge maps with more texture environs are suppressed by means of introducing a way that can combat isotropic surround. The inhibitor should apply lesser weights on the edges in case of texture environs as compared to the edges having defined boundaries. An efficacious method of computation for calculations of the isotropic surround suppression is used that accelerates the proposed algorithm. Subsequently, Hough transform is used on edge image along with its suppressed energy to extract all possible lines. Finally, the target regions are segmented from surrounding regions by examining geometric information and the resemblance between target and its surroundings. A number of the existing methods have been viewed and explored; the final proposal is refined to match the current trends and needs. The results indicate that the new method is efficient and effective for extracting target in optical images acquired by Unmanned Air Vehicles and it improves target detection significantly. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by IASE. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).