Robust thermophysics-based interpretation of radiometrically uncalibrated IR images for ATR and site change detection

We previously formulated a new approach for computing invariant features from infrared (IR) images. That approach is unique in the field since it considers not just surface reflection and surface geometry in the specification of invariant features, but it also takes into account internal object composition and thermal state that affect images sensed in the nonvisible spectrum. In this paper, we extend the thermophysical algebraic invariance (TAI) formulation for the interpretation of uncalibrated infrared imagery and further reduce the information that is required to be known about the environment. Features are defined such that they are functions of only the thermophysical properties of the imaged objects. In addition, we show that the distribution of the TAI features can be accurately modeled by symmetric alpha-stable models. This approach is shown to yield robust classifier performance. Results on ground truth data and real infrared imagery are presented. The application of this scheme for site change detection is discussed.