Dim Small Target Detection and Tracking: A Novel Method Based on Temporal Energy Selective Scaling and Trajectory Association

The detection and tracking of small targets in passive optical remote sensing (PORS) has broad applications. However, most of the previously proposed methods seldom utilize the abundant temporal features formed by target motion, resulting in poor detection and tracking performance for low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) targets. In this article, we analyze the difficulty based on spatial features and the feasibility based on temporal features of realizing effective detection. According to this analysis, we use a multi-frame as a detection unit and propose a detection method based on temporal energy selective scaling (TESS). Specifically, we investigated the composition of intensity temporal profiles (ITPs) formed by pixels on a multi-frame detection unit. For the target-present pixel, the target passing through the pixel will bring a weak transient disturbance on the ITP and introduce a change in the statistical properties of ITP. We use a well-designed function to amplify the transient disturbance, suppress the background and noise components, and output the trajectory of the target on the multi-frame detection unit. Subsequently, to solve the contradiction between the detection rate and the false alarm rate brought by the traditional threshold segmentation, we associate the temporal and spatial features of the output trajectory and propose a trajectory extraction method based on the 3D Hough transform. Finally, we model the trajectory of the target and propose a trajectory-based multi-target tracking method. Compared with the various state-of-the-art detection and tracking methods, experiments in multiple scenarios prove the superiority of our proposed methods.