Identification of landmines in thermal infrared images

This paper explores the detection of landmines using thermal images acquired in military context. The conditions in which the images are obtained have a direct influence on the methods used to perform the automatic detection of landmines through image processing techniques. The proposed methodology follows two main phases: acquisition of thermal images and its processing. In the first phase, four different experiences were prepared to analyze the factors that influence the quality of the detection. In the second phase was conducted the image processing on a set of images based on classification techniques using the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms. The classification was performed on a set of features extracted from ROI’s obtained by a sliding window. A second approach was also implemented based on segmentation using thresholds. The results achieved allow to identify factors that influence the detection of the mines: the burial depth, the presence of vegetation on the surface and the time of the day at which images were obtained. The optimal classification was obtained with the KNN classifier with 40 features selected with Sequential Backward Selection (SBS), and using the distance metric of correlation.