Gated viewing for target detection and target recognition

Gated viewing using short pulse lasers and fast cameras offers many new possibilities in imaging compared with passive EO imaging. Among these we note ranging capability, large target-to-background contrast also in low visibility, good penetration capability trough obscurants and vegetation as well as through shadows in buildings, cars etc. We also note that short wavelength laser systems have better angular resolution than long-wave infrared systems of the same aperture size. This gives an interesting potential of combined IR and laser systems for target detection and classification. Beside military applications civilian applications of gated viewing for search and rescue as well as vehicle enhanced vision and other applications are in progress. This presentation investigates the performance for gated viewing systems during different atmospheric conditions, including obscurants and gives examples of experimental data. The paper also deals with signal processing of gated viewing images for target detection. This is performed in two steps. First, image frames containing information of interest are found. In a second step those frames are investigated further to evaluate if man-made objects are present. In this step a sequence of images (video frames) are set up as a 3-D volume to incorporate spatial information. The object will then be detected using a set of quadrature filters operating on the volume.