A Space Target Detection Method Based on Spatial–Temporal Local Registration in Complicated Backgrounds

Abstract

Human space exploration has brought a growing crowded operating environment for in-orbit spacecraft. Monitoring the space environment and detecting space targets with photoelectric equipment has extensive and realistic significance in space safety. In this study, a local spatial–temporal registration (LSTR) method is proposed to detect moving small targets in space. Firstly, we applied the local region registration to estimate the neighbor background motion model. Secondly, we analyzed the temporal local grayscale difference between the strong clutter and target region and measured the temporal local–central region difference to enhance the target. Then, the temporal pixel contrast map was calculated, which further retains the target signal and suppresses the residue clutter. Finally, a simple adaptive threshold segmentation algorithm was applied to the saliency map to segment the targets. Comparative experiments were conducted on four groups of image sequences to validate the efficiency and robustness of the algorithm. The experimental findings indicate that the proposed method performs well in target enhancement and clutter suppression under different scenarios.