Wide area Hyperspectral Motion Imaging

Wide-area motion imaging WAMI has received increased attention in defense and commercial space due to the importance of wide-area persistent surveillance for homeland protection, battlefield situational awareness, ISR of denied areas, and environmental monitoring. Recently developed systems such as Argus-IS have the capability to surveil up to 100km2 at over a gigapixel resolution from an airborne platform. This huge amount of visual data requires algorithms for automated detection and tracking of targets of interest. However, traditional kinematic data based tracking algorithms have challenges in wide area motion imagery due to a relatively low-sampling rate, low spatial resolution, occlusions, changes in lighting, and multiple confusers. Recent studies have shown that incorporating hyperspectral data can boost probability of detection, reduce false alarms and improve performance in vehicle tracking and dismount detection 1.