Pattern recognition employing spatially variant unconstrained correlation filters

A spatial domain Optimal Trade-off Maximum Average Correlation Height (SPOT-MACH) filter is proposed in this thesis. The proposed technique uses a pre-defined fixed size kernel rather than using estimation techniques. The spatial domain implementation of OT-MACH offers the advantage that it does not have shift invariance imposed on it as the kernel can be modified depending upon its position within the input image. This allows normalization of the kernel and allows inclusion of a space domain non-linearity to improve performance. The proposed SPOT-MACH filter can be used to maximize the height of the correlation peak in the presence of distortions of the training object and provide resistance to background clutter. One of the major characteristics of the SPOT-MACH filter is that it can be tuned to maximize the height and sharpness of the correlation peak by using trade-offs between distortion tolerance, peak sharpness and the ability to suppress clutter noise. A number of non-parametric local regression techniques offer a simplified approach to pattern recognition problems which employ linear filtering using low pass filters designed using moving window local approximations. In most of these cases the algorithms search for a region of interest near the point of estimation for various prevailing conditions which fit the required criteria. These estimates are calculated for a defined window size which is determined as being the largest area within which the estimators do not widely vary from the criteria. The only drawback in this approach is that the window size is directly proportional to the required computational resources and would adversely affect the performance of the system if the moving window size is not proportionate to the resources. The proposed filter employs an optimization technique using low-pass filtering to highlight the potential region of interests in the image and then restricts the movement of the kernel to these regions to allow target identification and to use less computational resources. Also another optimization technique is also proposed which is based on an entropy filter which measures the degree of randomness between two changing scenes and would return the area where change has occurred i.e. the target object might be present. This approach gives a more accurate region of interest than the low-pass filtering approach. Apart from the software based optimization approaches two hardware based enhancement techniques have also been proposed in this thesis. One of the approaches employs Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to perform correlation process employing the inbuilt multipliers and look up tables and the other one uses Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) to do parallel processing of the input scene. Also in this thesis a detailed analysis of SPOT-MACH has been carried out by comparing with popular feature based techniques like Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and a comparison matrix has been created. The proposed filter uses a two-staged approach using speed optimizations and then detection of targets from input scenes. Both visible and Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) imagery data sets have been used to test the performance of filter

Constrained least-squares digital image restoration

The design of a digital image restoration filter must address four concerns: the completeness of the underlying imaging system model, the validity of the restoration metric used to derive the filter, the computational efficiency of the algorithm for computing the filter values and the ability to apply the filter in the spatial domain. Consistent with these four concerns, this dissertation presents a constrained least-squares (CLS) restoration filter for digital image restoration. The CLS restoration filter is based on a comprehensive, continuous-input/discrete- processing/continuous-output (c/d/c) imaging system model that accounts for acquisition blur, spatial sampling, additive noise and imperfect image reconstruction. The c/d/c model-based CLS restoration filter can be applied rigorously and is easier to compute than the corresponding c/d/c model-based Wiener restoration filter. The CLS restoration filter can be efficiently implemented in the spatial domain as a small convolution kernel. Simulated restorations are used to illustrate the CLS filter\u27s performance for a range of imaging conditions. Restoration studies based, in part, on an actual Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) imaging system, show that the CLS restoration filter can be used for effective range reduction. The CLS restoration filter is also successfully tested on blurred and noisy radiometric images of the earth\u27s outgoing radiation field from a satellite-borne scanning radiometer used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for atmospheric research

Automatic aerial target detection and tracking system in airborne FLIR images based on efficient target trajectory filtering

Common strategies for detection and tracking of aerial moving targets in airborne Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) images offer accurate results in images composed by a non-textured sky. However, when cloud and earth regions appear in the image sequence, those strategies result in an over-detection that increases very significantly the false alarm rate. Besides, the airborne camera induces a global motion in the image sequence that complicates even more detection and tracking tasks. In this work, an automatic detection and tracking system with an innovative and efficient target trajectory filtering is presented. It robustly compensates the global motion to accurately detect and track potential aerial targets. Their trajectories are analyzed by a curve fitting technique to reliably validate real targets. This strategy allows to filter false targets with stationary or erratic trajectories. The proposed system makes special emphasis in the use of low complexity video analysis techniques to achieve real-time operation. Experimental results using real FLIR sequences show a dramatic reduction of the false alarm rate, while maintaining the detection rate

Hand Gestures Recognition using Thermal Images

Master's thesis in Information- and communication technology (IKT590)Hand gesture recognition is important in a variety of applications, including medical systems and assistive technologies, human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, industrial automation, virtual environment control, sign language translation, crisis and disaster management, en-tertainment and computer games, and robotics. RGB cameras are usually used for most of these applications. However, their performance is limited especially in low-light conditions. It is challenging to accurately classify the hand gestures in dark conditions. In this thesis, we propose the robust hand gestures recognition based on high resolution thermal imaging. These thermal images are captured using FLIR Lepton 3.5 thermal camera which is a high resolution thermal camera with a resolution of 160×120 pixels. Thereafter, we feed the captured thermal images to a deep CNN model to accurately classify the hand gestures. We evaluate the performance of the proposed model with the benchmark models in terms of accuracy as well as the inference time when deployed on edge computing devices such as Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and NVIDIA JETSON AGX XAVIER

A Fast Image Super-Resolution Algorithm Using an Adaptive Wiener Filter

A computationally simple super-resolution algorithm using a type of adaptive Wiener filter is proposed. The algorithm produces an improved resolution image from a sequence of low-resolution (LR) video frames with overlapping field of view. The algorithm uses subpixel registration to position each LR pixel value on a common spatial grid that is referenced to the average position of the input frames. The positions of the LR pixels are not quantized to a finite grid as with some previous techniques. The output high-resolution (HR) pixels are obtained using a weighted sum of LR pixels in a local moving window. Using a statistical model, the weights for each HR pixel are designed to minimize the mean squared error and they depend on the relative positions of the surrounding LR pixels. Thus, these weights adapt spatially and temporally to changing distributions of LR pixels due to varying motion. Both a global and spatially varying statistical model are considered here. Since the weights adapt with distribution of LR pixels, it is quite robust and will not become unstable when an unfavorable distribution of LR pixels is observed. For translational motion, the algorithm has a low computational complexity and may be readily suitable for real-time and/or near real-time processing applications. With other motion models, the computational complexity goes up significantly. However, regardless of the motion model, the algorithm lends itself to parallel implementation. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated here in a number of experimental results using simulated and real video sequences. A computational analysis is also presented