Optical Correlation Recognition Technology of Small Moving Target Based on Wavelet Multi-Scale Edge Fusion

Abstract

Moving target recognition has a wide application in varieties of domains and has received more attention in recent years. Among all the recognition methods, optical correlation technology, using hybrid optoelectronic joint transform correlator (HOJTC), has the merits of parallel, large capacity and high-speed, so it is considered as one of the most effective methods for moving target detection. But in the course of detecting, some targets are too small to be recognized by HOJTC. These small targets in cluttered background and strong noise may affect the brightness of the correlation peaks and have a serious influence on target recognition results. In order to solve this problem, this paper applies a wavelet multi-scale edge fusion algorithm which firstly extracts the edge at different scales by wavelet modulus maximum method, and then fuses the detected edge to obtain more edge information of the target. In addition, for the moving distortion problems, taking temporal state of the target as the template can achieve the template update. To prove this method, many detection experiments of small moving targets have been performed with optical correlation method. As an example a small target “boat” taking up only pixels is presented. The recognition results show that the brightness of the correlation peaks is enhanced and the target recognition ratio is increased. The conclusion can be drawn that applying this algorithm in optical correlation method can realize the small moving target recognition successfully and expand the application to scope of optical correlation technology.