Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers

The minimum resolvable temperature difference (MRTD) at which a four-rod target can be resolved is a critical parameter used to assess the comprehensive performance of thermal imaging systems, which is important for technological innovation in military and other fields. Recently, there have been som...

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Main Authors: Zhenggang Guo, Wei Guan, Haibin Wu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2023-05-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/23/9/4542
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author Zhenggang Guo
Wei Guan
Haibin Wu
author_facet Zhenggang Guo
Wei Guan
Haibin Wu
author_sort Zhenggang Guo
collection DOAJ
description The minimum resolvable temperature difference (MRTD) at which a four-rod target can be resolved is a critical parameter used to assess the comprehensive performance of thermal imaging systems, which is important for technological innovation in military and other fields. Recently, there have been some attempts to use an automatic objective approach based on deep learning to take the place of the classical manual subjective MRTD measurement approach, which is strongly affected by the psychological subjective factors of the experimenter and is limited in accuracy and speed. However, the scale variability of four-rod targets and the low pixels of infrared thermal cameras have turned out to be a challenging problem for automatic MRTD measurement. We propose a multiscale deblurred feature extraction network (MDF-Net), a backbone based on a yolov5 neural network, in an attempt to solve the aforementioned problem. We first present a global attention mechanism (GAM) attention module to represent strong images of the four-rod targets. Next, a Rep VGG module is introduced to decrease the blur. Our experiments show that the proposed method achieves the desired effect and state-of-the-art detection results, which innovatively improve the accuracy of four-rod target detection to 82.3% and thus make it possible for the thermal imagers to see further and to respond faster and more accurately.
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spelling doaj.art-79414a36ee9040bcb6498d4824f01e0a2023-11-17T23:45:54ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202023-05-01239454210.3390/s23094542Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal ImagersZhenggang Guo0Wei Guan1Haibin Wu2School of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology of China, Dalian 116024, ChinaSchool of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology of China, Dalian 116024, ChinaSchool of Mechanical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology of China, Dalian 116024, ChinaThe minimum resolvable temperature difference (MRTD) at which a four-rod target can be resolved is a critical parameter used to assess the comprehensive performance of thermal imaging systems, which is important for technological innovation in military and other fields. Recently, there have been some attempts to use an automatic objective approach based on deep learning to take the place of the classical manual subjective MRTD measurement approach, which is strongly affected by the psychological subjective factors of the experimenter and is limited in accuracy and speed. However, the scale variability of four-rod targets and the low pixels of infrared thermal cameras have turned out to be a challenging problem for automatic MRTD measurement. We propose a multiscale deblurred feature extraction network (MDF-Net), a backbone based on a yolov5 neural network, in an attempt to solve the aforementioned problem. We first present a global attention mechanism (GAM) attention module to represent strong images of the four-rod targets. Next, a Rep VGG module is introduced to decrease the blur. Our experiments show that the proposed method achieves the desired effect and state-of-the-art detection results, which innovatively improve the accuracy of four-rod target detection to 82.3% and thus make it possible for the thermal imagers to see further and to respond faster and more accurately.https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/23/9/4542minimum resolvable temperature differenceneural networkinfrared thermal imagingdeep learning
spellingShingle Zhenggang Guo
Wei Guan
Haibin Wu
Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers
Sensors
minimum resolvable temperature difference
neural network
infrared thermal imaging
deep learning
title Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers
title_full Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers
title_fullStr Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers
title_full_unstemmed Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers
title_short Multiscale Deblurred Feature Extraction Network for Automatic Four-Rod Target Detection in MRTD Measuring Process of Thermal Imagers
title_sort multiscale deblurred feature extraction network for automatic four rod target detection in mrtd measuring process of thermal imagers
topic minimum resolvable temperature difference
neural network
infrared thermal imaging
deep learning
url https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/23/9/4542
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AT weiguan multiscaledeblurredfeatureextractionnetworkforautomaticfourrodtargetdetectioninmrtdmeasuringprocessofthermalimagers
AT haibinwu multiscaledeblurredfeatureextractionnetworkforautomaticfourrodtargetdetectioninmrtdmeasuringprocessofthermalimagers