Model-based automatic target recognition using hierarchical foveal machine vision

This paper presents a target detection and interrogation techniques for a foveal automatic target recognition (ATR) system based on the hierarchical scale-space processing of imagery from a rectilinear tessellated multiacuity retinotopology. Conventional machine vision captures imagery and applies early vision techniques with uniform resolution throughout the field-of-view (FOV). In contrast, foveal active vision features graded acuity imagers and processing coupled with context sensitive gaze control, analogous to that prevalent throughout vertebrate vision. Foveal vision can operate more efficiently in dynamic scenarios with localized relevance than uniform acuity vision because resolution is treated as a dynamically allocable resource. Foveal ATR exploits the difference between detection and recognition resolution requirements and sacrifices peripheral acuity to achieve a wider FOV (e.g. faster search), greater localized resolution where needed (e.g., more confident recognition at the fovea), and faster frame rates (e.g., more reliable tracking and navigation) without increasing processing requirements. The rectilinearity of the retinotopology supports a data structure that is a subset of the image pyramid. This structure lends itself to multiresolution and conventional 2-D algorithms, and features a shift invariance of perceived target shape that tolerates sensor pointing errors and supports multiresolution model-based techniques. The detection technique described in this paper searches for regions-of- interest (ROIs) using the foveal sensor's wide FOV peripheral vision. ROIs are initially detected using anisotropic diffusion filtering and expansion template matching to a multiscale Zernike polynomial-based target model. Each ROI is then interrogated to filter out false target ROIs by sequentially pointing a higher acuity region of the sensor at each ROI centroid and conducting a fractal dimension test that distinguishes targets from structured clutter.