An FPGA-based real-time infrared target detection system with visual image positioning

This paper builds a real-time infrared target detection system with a visual positioning function based on FPGA, a visual camera, and an infrared camera. Firstly, the whole system is built based on FPGA. The design and implementation of the infrared image acquisition module, a data storage module, SD card module, and image display module are completed. Ping pong operation is used for the data storage modules to realize video stream transmission. The experiment results show that the system built in this paper can collect and display the target in real-time. To improve the system performance, several image processing algorithms are proposed, including an improved median filtering algorithm, linear transformation, and Laplacian sharpening algorithm; a combined algorithm of histogram equalization, Gamma transform, and Laplacian sharpening; a target detection algorithm combined with threshold segmentation and a background difference algorithm; and a visual localization algorithm. Software simulation and FPGA hardware implementation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.