Target detection from coregistered visual-thermal-range images

Amethod to automatically detect targets from sets of pixelregistered visual, thermal, and range images is outlined. It uses operations speci cally designed to work on the di erent kinds of images to explote the information given by each of them. Five features are used to distinguish the targets from the clutter: texture, brightness, temperature, surface planarity, and height. The results from individual detectors are then combined to improve the detection rate while reducing the number of false alarms. A morphological operation called \erosion of strength n" is also introduced and utilized as a powerful tool for removal of spurious information. The excellent results obtained for detection support the suitability of this approach for other ATR (Automatic Target Recognition) problems.