Method for Enhancing Ground-Based Detection of a Moving Object

[0020]Referring first to FIG. 1, there is shown a flow chart which depicts a method for enhancing ground-based detection of a moving object comprising the present invention. The method illustrated by the flow chart of FIG. 1 is designed to accurately and consistently locate bright, moving objects within the FOV (field of view) by analyzing a sequence of digital images captured by a sensor, while minimizing the effects of undesired background clutter. For the method illustrated in FIG. 1, the image characteristics of importance are (1) the level of contrast between the objects of interest and the background, and (2) the motion of the objects of interest apparent to the sensor observing movement by the objects of interest. To exploit these characteristics, the method of FIG. 1 is designed to extract those objects from a scene that are bright and exhibiting adequate motion to detect movement. However, parameters can be changed that would allow extraction of dark objects, or objects exhibi