Research On The Methods Of Infrared Imaging System Target Acquisition Performance Prediction

Infrared imaging system performance assessment method is fundamentally important for the development and usage of infrared imaging techniques.The performance assessment method includes wild filed test method and prediction method.Compared with wild field test method,prediction method can assess the system in lab,which is simple and cheap.The prediction method has becoming the most important performance assessment method.However,the present prediction methods have some faults: infrared imaging simulation method is heavily reliant on digital modeling technique and doesn't have the ability to assess the simulating image quantitatively;the lab test process of performance model prediction method can not reflect the feature of wild filed and is heavily reliant on subjective test;the present clutter metrics don't pay much attention on human visual characteristics and can not reflect the effects of the background clutter on the target acquisition performance.Hence,this paper makes the research in three fields: improving the present imaging simulation and performance model prediction methods;proposing new clutter metrics with human visual characteristics;proposing a new image based target acquisition performance prediction method by combining clutter and target area features.The main research results are as follows:?1?Assessment simulation model based target acquisition performance prediction method.The imaging simulation method and performance model method are analyzed,their faults are pointed out,and the assessment simulation model is constructed by combining them using the modular design method.With the constructed assessment simulation model,two classical infrared imaging systems' target acquisition performance are predicted and assessed.For constructing a more accurate model,the angular-dependence model based aliasing effect method is constructed and the effects of aliasing on the image quality are quantitatively assessed.?2?Background clutter based target acquisition performance prediction method.Optimal response threshold based clutter metric?ORT clutter metric?and selective visual attention based clutter metric with human visual system adaptability?SVA clutter metric?are proposed.The two metrics introduce selectivity and adaptability of human visual system into clutter metrics,simulate the response of human visual system to clutter by pursing the lowest point in the root mean square error surface,and give quantification result of clutter.The quantification result is introduced into the prediction model,and the target acquisition performance prediction based on the background clutter is achieved.The accuracy of performance prediction is assessed by the Search₂ dataset and coherence analysis methods,the result shows its high accuracy.Three experiments,which are used to analysis the effect of target area features?contrast,location and size?on the accuracy of performance prediction,are designed.The application scope of those prediction methods is discussed.?3?Image based target acquisition performance prediction method.Based on the “what” and “where” visual stream,the target area features based target acquisition performance method is proposed.The proposed method is combined with background clutter based prediction method,and then we can achieve the image based target acquisition performance prediction method.The accuracy of the method is assessed by Search₂ dataset and is compared with other methods' accuracy,the result shows its effectiveness.