Combining image analysis and thermal models for infrared scene simulations

This paper describes an analysis/synthesis simulation procedure for the generation of realistic infrared images of outdoor scenes. The approach is based on combining synthetic scenes with real images using segmentation algorithms and region analysis. At the analysis stage, the image is segmented into homogeneous regions. Each surface region is then attributed material properties and its orientation is computed. Next, a texture signal is extracted from the original image. At the synthesis stage, thermal models are used to predict surface temperatures and to compute the radiometries of the thermal image. Finally, the extracted texture signal is combined with the synthetic radiometries. Temporal variations of the texture signal are also studied in order to generate the same scene at a different time of day