A likelihood ratio formula for two-dimensional random fields

This paper is concerned with the detection of a random signal in white Gaussian noise when both the signal and the noise are two-dimensional random fields. The principal result is the derivation of a recursive formula for the likelihood ratio relating it to certain conditional moments of the signal. It is also shown that, except for some relatively uninteresting cases, a simple exponential formula for the likelihood ratio, such as one has in one dimension, is not possible.