Automatic Removal of Poor Quality Images from Digital Image Sequences

This paper introduces a spatio-temporal technique for selecting or filtering out lower quality digital image frames. The technique is demonstrated on Electro-Optical/Infrared image sequences which suggests it is a candidate for exploiting reconnaissance (recce) imagery or can be part of a recce subsystem. For human vision exploitation, a few poor quality image frames out of hundreds in a digital image sequence may be only a minor irritation when the sequence runs at the typical 30 frames per second. Of course, if that human needs to examine each frame, a system that automatically removes or enhances lower quality image frames could be beneficial. For machine vision subsystems, a few poor quality image frames could cause lower probability of recognition. The filtering technique introduced in this paper can improve input into machine vision algorithms. Another application for this technique is digital transmission to filter out unwanted images prior to transmission or to selectively enha..