Real-time exploitation of image sequences in dynamic surroundings

Technological progress in the fields of computing hardware and efficient algorithms make it possible to set up real-time exploitation systems for a huge number of applications (e.g. assessment of camouflage effectiveness, or various surveil-lance applications, UAVs, as well as image sequence data reduction, indexing, archiving, and retrieval). The system in question has been developed to cope with highly dynamic situations. Such dynamic situations may be characterized by moving targets acquired by a static, trembling, or moving sensor system. The image sequences may stem from a visual-optical (VIS) or some forward looking infrared (FLIR) sensor. Except for wide-angle lenses (due to their optical distortions) neither sensor nor calibration parameters have to be known to the automatic exploitation system. Furthermore no human interaction is required. The algorithmic approach tries to digitally stabilize the movement of the sensor system. To accomplish this task the algorithm extracts 40-60 tie points from the static nonmoving background, then robustly matches the tie point constellations frame to frame for calculating the 8 parameters of a projective mapping. This is the basis for some sort of background stabilization. The difference image of two consecutive and matched image frames re-veals the moving targets. After the segmentation of the (moving) target signatures, additionally attached tracking and classification components have been tested.