The challenge in detecting explosive hazards is that there are multiple types of targets buried at different depths in a highlycluttered environment. A wide array of target and clutter signatures exist, which makes detection algorithm design difficult. Such explosive hazards are typically deployed in past and present war zones and they pose a grave threat to the safety of civilians and soldiers alike. This paper focuses on a new image enhancement technique for hand-held ground penetrating radar (GPR). Advantages of the proposed technique is it runs in real-time and it does not require the radar to remain at a constant distance from the ground. Herein, we evaluate the performance of the proposed technique using data collected from a U.S. Army test site, which includes targets with varying amounts of metal content, placement depths, clutter and times of day. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve-based results are presented for the detection of shallow, medium and deeply buried targets. Preliminary results are very encouraging and they demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed filtering technique.

Date Published: 3 May 2016
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9823, Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XXI, 98230I (3 May 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2223294

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9823:
Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XXI
Steven S. Bishop; Jason C. Isaacs, Editor(s)