Wavelet-RX anomaly detection for dual-band forward-looking infrared imagery.

This paper describes a new wavelet-based anomaly detection technique for a dual-band forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor consisting of a coregistered longwave (LW) with a midwave (MW) sensor. The proposed approach, called the wavelet-RX (Reed-Xiaoli) algorithm, consists of a combination of a two-dimensional (2D) wavelet transform and a well-known multivariate anomaly detector called the RX algorithm. In our wavelet-RX algorithm, a 2D wavelet transform is first applied to decompose the input image into uniform subbands. A subband-image cube is formed by concatenating together a number of significant subbands (high-energy subbands). The RX algorithm is then applied to the subband-image cube obtained from a wavelet decomposition of the LW or MW sensor data. In the case of the dual band, the RX algorithm is applied to a subband-image cube constructed by concatenating together the high-energy subbands of the LW and MW subband-image cubes. Experimental results are presented for the proposed wavelet-RX and the classical constant false alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm for detecting anomalies (targets) in a single broadband FLIR (LW or MW) or in a coregistered dual-band FLIR sensor. The results show that the proposed wavelet-RX algorithm outperforms the classical CFAR detector for both single-band and dual-band FLIR sensors.