Automated tracking and classification of infrared images

The problem of automatic target recognition (ATR) and image classification has been active research fields in image processing and neural networks. In this paper, we explore novel ATR techniques such as object pre-processing, tracking and classification for sequence of infrared (IR) targets. We attempt to track the IR objects automatically without the prior knowledge of the object. We enhance our algorithm to track multiple objects in image frames based on the knowledge of the histogram of the targets. We also propose algorithms for for classification of IR targets. We perform image segmentation and extract intensity and edge features of the object. Finally, we exploit these different types of features such as statistical (based on intensity) and shape (based on edge information) of the object for classification using a self-organizing map (SOM) classifier.