An Exploration of Feature Detector Performance in the Thermal-Infrared Modality

  • Authors:
  • Stephen Vidas;Ruan Lakemond;Simon Denman;Clinton Fookes;Sridha Sridharan;Tim Wark

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-;-;-;-

  • Venue:
  • DICTA '11 Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Thermal-infrared images have superior statistical properties compared with visible-spectrum images in many low-light or no-light scenarios. However, a detailed understanding of feature detector performance in the thermal modality lags behind that of the visible modality. To address this, the first comprehensive study on feature detector performance on thermal-infrared images is conducted. A dataset is presented which explores a total of ten different environments with a range of statistical properties. An investigation is conducted into the effects of several digital and physical image transformations on detector repeatability in these environments. The effect of non-uniformity noise, unique to the thermal modality, is analyzed. The accumulation of sensor non-uniformities beyond the minimum possible level was found to have only a small negative effect. A limiting of feature counts was found to improve the repeatability performance of several detectors. Most other image transformations had predictable effects on feature stability. The best-performing detector varied considerably depending on the nature of the scene and the test.