An SVM-based small target segmentation and clustering approach

Segmentation and clustering of infrared small target images in a sky or sea-sky background is considered in this paper, which is the preprocessing part of the detection and recognition of the moving small targets in an infrared image sequence. The infrared image intensity surface is well fitted by the least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM), and then the maximum extremum points are detected on the well fitted intensity surface by convolving the image with the second order directional derivative operators deduced from the mapped LS-SVM with mixtures of kernels. With the coarse locations, the possible targets are extracted by the clustering analysis. The computer experiments are carried out for the real and simulated sky and sea-sky infrared images. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed approach is effective.