Title: A novel landmine detection process using Karhunen Loeve Transform and Marker-based Watershed Segmentation in IR images

Authors: A.O. Ajlouni, A.F. Sheta

Addresses: Department of Computer Information Systems, The University of Jordan, P.O. Box 1679, Amman 11910, Jordan. ' Computers and Systems Department, Electronics Research Institute (ERI), P.O. Box 12311, El Buhouth St., Dokki, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract: This paper presents a novel process for detecting landmines from Infrared (IR) images. The detection process uses Karhunen Loeve Transformation (KLT) to process a set of IR images collected at night. The detection process consist of number of stages. The first stage is the enhancement to improve the image quality. The next stage is the Marker-based Watershed Segmentation to specify the domain of possible objects. The final stage is the mine recognition. A comparison with Lee|s method (Lee, 2001) is provided for three mine field with various soil types. Our method provided a higher detection rate and lower false alarms.

Keywords: landmine detection; KLT; Karhunen Loeve transformation; watershed segmentation; infrared sensors; image processing; landmines; mine recognition; minefields; land mines.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSISE.2010.034629

International Journal of Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering, 2010 Vol.3 No.1, pp.21 - 30

Published online: 13 Aug 2010 *

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