Spectral methods to detect surface mines

Edwin M. Winter; Miranda Schatten Silvious

doi:10.1117/12.783022

29 April 2008 Spectral methods to detect surface mines

Edwin M. Winter, Miranda Schatten Silvious

Proceedings Volume 6953, Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XIII; 69530R (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.783022
Event: SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, 2008, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

Over the past five years, advances have been made in the spectral detection of surface mines under minefield detection programs at the U. S. Army RDECOM CERDEC Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD). The problem of detecting surface land mines ranges from the relatively simple, the detection of large anti-vehicle mines on bare soil, to the very difficult, the detection of anti-personnel mines in thick vegetation. While spatial and spectral approaches can be applied to the detection of surface mines, spatial-only detection requires many pixels-on-target such that the mine is actually imaged and shape-based features can be exploited. This method is unreliable in vegetated areas because only part of the mine may be exposed, while spectral detection is possible without the mine being resolved. At NVESD, hyperspectral and multi-spectral sensors throughout the reflection and thermal spectral regimes have been applied to the mine detection problem. Data has been collected on mines in forest and desert regions and algorithms have been developed both to detect the mines as anomalies and to detect the mines based on their spectral signature. In addition to the detection of individual mines, algorithms have been developed to exploit the similarities of mines in a minefield to improve their detection probability. In this paper, the types of spectral data collected over the past five years will be summarized along with the advances in algorithm development.

Citation Download Citation

Edwin M. Winter and Miranda Schatten Silvious "Spectral methods to detect surface mines", Proc. SPIE 6953, Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XIII, 69530R (29 April 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.783022

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