Background Adaptive Band Selection in a Fixed Filter System

An automated band selection algorithm suitable for real-time application with fixed filter multispectral cameras is presented for multispectral target detection. Fixed filter multispectral cameras collect all bands regardless of the background. Background adaptive band is the selection of a subset of the bands for target detection processing. Fixed filter systems typically include a small number of general-purpose bands. The bands are chosen to enhance targetbackground contrast but are not keyed to specific target features. In some situations it is unlikely that all bands contribute to target discrimination. Using only a subset of the available bands can decrease false alarms while maintaining target detection performance and reduced processing requirements. The advantages are demonstrated using six band multispectral data and two distinct background categories.