Passive infrared technique for buried object detection and classification

This paper investigates the problem of detection and characterization of shallowly buried landmines (more generally, buried objects) using passive thermal infrared technique. The problem consists of two steps. The first step aims at predicting the evolution of the soil temperature given the thermal properties of the soil and the buried objects using a physical model. In the second step, the forward thermal model and acquired infrared images are used to detect the presence of buried objects and characterize them based on the estimation of their thermal and geometrical properties.