FPGA implementation of local contrast method for infrared small target detection

Infrared (IR) small target detection has become an important technology in infrared searching and tracking system, infrared radar warning system and infrared imaging tracking system. Among several computational models we use a local contrast method (LCM) to detect IR small target which is inspired by human vision system (HVS) and derived kernel (DK) model. This paper presents a system architecture which employs a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) as the hardware processing platform for small target detection in infrared image at low signal-noise ratio (SNR). Performance of the IR small target detection system will be evaluated by performing several experiments. The platform based on FPGA will provide high computational performance to satisfy the real-time processing and low power consumption requirements.