Bio-EMD, a biologically inspired fusion of visible and infrared (IR) images based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and color opponent processing, is introduced. First, registered visible and IR captures of the same scene are decomposed into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) through EMD. The fused image is then generated by an intuitive opponent processing the source IMFs. The resulting image is evaluated based on the amount of information transferred from the two input images, the clarity of details, the vividness of depictions, and range of meaningful differences in lightness and chromaticity. We show that this opponent processing-based technique outperformed other algorithms based on pixel intensity and multiscale techniques. Additionally, Bio-EMD transferred twice the information to the fused image compared to other methods, providing a higher level of sharpness, more natural-looking colors, and similar contrast levels. These results were obtained prior to optimization of color opponent processing filters. The Bio-EMD algorithm has potential applicability in multisensor fusion covering visible bands, forensics, medical imaging, remote sensing, natural resources management, etc.
KEYWORDS: Field programmable gate arrays, Radar, Detection and tracking algorithms, Data modeling, Synthetic vision, Algorithm development, MATLAB, Global Positioning System, Digital signal processing, Systems modeling
The integrity monitor for synthetic vision systems provides pilots with a consistency check between stored Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and real-time sensor data. This paper discusses the implementation of the Shadow Detection and Extraction (SHADE) algorithm in reconfigurable hardware to increase the efficiency of the design. The SHADE algorithm correlates data from a weather radar and DEM to determine occluded regions of the flight path terrain. This process of correlating the weather radar and DEM data occurs in two parallel threads which are then fed into a disparity checker. The DEM thread is broken up into four main sub-functions: 1) synchronization and translation of GPS coordinates of aircraft to the weather radar, 2) mapping range bins to coordinates and computing depression angles, 3) mapping state assignments to range bins, and 4) shadow region edge detection. This correlation must be done in realtime; therefore, a hardware implementation is ideal due to the amount of data that is to be processed. The hardware of choice is the field programmable gate array because of programmability, reusability, and computational ability. Assigning states to each range bin is the most computationally intensive process and it is implemented as a finite state machine (FSM). Results of this work are focused on the implementation of the FSM.
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