When Infrared Small Target Detection Meets Tensor Ring Decomposition: A Multiscale Morphological Framework

Detecting the small targets from a heterogeneous background in an infrared image is a challenging problem, which has received extensive attention. In this article, we propose a method in terms of tensor ring (TR) decomposition and nonlinear multiscale morphological top-hat transformation for infrared small target detection (ISTD). First, a tensor model with prior knowledge is constructed for extracting the structural features of multiple infrared images. Then, the problem of small target detection is converted into a problem of minimizing the tensor rank with TR. Based on the TR decomposition model, we introduce the top-hat regularization into our model with multiple structural elements of different size to perform morphological operations. The corresponding morphological model exploits a more accurate ring top-hat regularization expression through adaptive nonlinear combination for the ISTD problem. Finally, the optimization of the model is realized by the closed solution given by the alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm. In order to verify the superior performance of our method, our method is compared with a number of advanced detection models. By analyzing the results of comparison experiments, the detection accuracy and precision of our model in the detection of small infrared targets have been improved. Even in complex background conditions, our model also maintain a good robustness.