Centroid computation of Gaussian spot is often conducted to get the exact position of a target or to measure wave-front slopes in the fields of target tracking and wave-front sensing. Center of Gravity (CoG) is the most traditional method of centroid computation, known as its low algorithmic complexity. However both electronic noise from the detector and photonic noise from the environment reduces its accuracy. In order to improve the accuracy, thresholding is unavoidable before centroid computation, and optimum threshold need to be selected. In this paper, the model of Gaussian spot is established to analyze the performance of optimum threshold under different Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) conditions. Besides, two optimum threshold selection methods are introduced: T_mCoG (using m % of the maximum intensity of spot as threshold), and T_kCoG ( usingμ_n +κσ n as the threshold), μ_n and σ_n are the mean value and deviation of back noise. Firstly, their impact on the detection error under various SNR conditions is simulated respectively to find the way to decide the value of k or m. Then, a comparison between them is made. According to the simulation result, T_mCoG is superior over T_kCoG for the accuracy of selected threshold, and detection error is also lower.

Date Published: 8 October 2015
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 9675, AOPC 2015: Image Processing and Analysis, 967517 (8 October 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2199247

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9675:
AOPC 2015: Image Processing and Analysis
Chunhua Shen; Weiping Yang; Honghai Liu, Editor(s)