volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Passive millimeter (MMW) imaging can penetrate clothing to create interpretable imagery of concealed objects. However, the image quality is often restricted by low signal to noise ratio and temperature contrast as well as low spatial resolution. In this paper, we explore a four-channel passive MMW imaging system operating in the 8 and 3 mm wavelength regimes with linear vertical and horizontal polarization directions. Both registration between different channel images and segmentation of concealed objects are addressed. Multi-channel image registration is performed by geometric feature matching and affine transform, and then multi-level segmentation separates the human body region from the background, and concealed objects from the body region, sequentially. In the experiments, several metallic and non-metallic objects concealed under clothing are captured in indoors. It will be shown that our method can separate objects with higher accuracy than the conventional method.

1. Zhang, J.-C., Y.-Z. Yin, and J.-P. Ma, "Design of narrow band-pass frequency selective surfaces for millimeter wave applications," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 96, 287-298, 2009.
doi:10.2528/PIER09081702

2. Mohammad-Taheri, M., M. Fahimnia, Y. Wang, M. Yu, and S. Safavi-Naeini, "Wave analysis for inductively matched millimeter wave amplifier design," Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 13, 41-50, 2010.
doi:10.2528/PIERC09112508

3. Siles, G. A., J. M. Riera, P. Garcia-del-Pino, and J. Romeu, "Atmospheric propagation at 100 and 300 GHz: Assessment of a method to identify rainy conditions during radio soundings," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 13, 257-279, 2012.

4. Chen, H.-M., S. Lee, R. M. Rao, M.-A. Slamani, and P. K. Varshney, "Imaging for concealed weapon detection: A tutorial overview of development in imaging sensors and processing," IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Vol. 22, 52-61, 2005.
doi:10.1109/MSP.2005.1406480

5. Kim, W.-H., N.-W. Moon, H.-K. Kim, and Y.-H. Kim, "Linear polarization sum imaging in passive millimeter-wave imaging system for target recognition," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 136, 175-193, 2013.

6. Appleby, R. and R. N. Anderton, "Millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave imaging for security and surveillance," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 95, 1683-1690, 2007.
doi:10.1109/JPROC.2007.898832

7. Yujiri, L., M. Shoucri, and P. Moffa, "Passive millimeter-wave imaging," IEEE Microwave Magazine, Vol. 4, 39-50, 2003.
doi:10.1109/MMW.2003.1237476

8. Demirci, S., H. Cetinkaya, E. Yigit, C. Ozdemir, and A. Vertiy, "A study on millimeter-wave imaging of concealed objects: applications using back-projection algorithm," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 128, 457-477, 2012.

9. Cooper, K. B., R. J. Dengler, N. Llombart, T. Bryllert, G. Chattopadhyay, I. Mehdi, and P. H. Siegel, "An approach for sub-second imaging of concealed objects using terahertz (THz) radar," J. Infrared, Milli. Terahz Waves, Vol. 30, 1297-1307, 2009.

10. Gonzalez, R. C., Digital Image Processing 2/E, Prentice-Hall Inc., 2003.

11. Delignon, Y., A. Marzouki, and W. Pieczynski, "Estimation of generalized mixtures and its application in image segmentation," IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, Vol. 6, No. 10, 1364-1375, 1997.
doi:10.1109/83.624951

12. Farnoosh, R. and B. Zarpak, "Image segmentation using Gaussian mixture model," IUST Int. J. Engineering Science, Vol. 19, 29-32, 2008.

13. Comer, M. L. and E. J. Delp, "Segmentation of textured images using a multiresolution Gaussian autoregressive model," IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, Vol. 8, 408-420, 1999.
doi:10.1109/83.748895

14. Shen, X., C. R. Dietlein, E. Grossman, Z. Popovic, and F. G. Meyer, "Detection and segmentation of concealed objects in Terahertz images," IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, Vol. 17, 2465-2475, 2008.
doi:10.1109/TIP.2008.2006662

15. Haworth, C. D., Y. De Saint-Pern, D. Clark, E. Trucco, and Y. R. Petillot, "Detection and tracking of multiple metallic objects in millimeter-wave images," International Journal of Computer Vision, Vol. 71, 183-196, 2007.
doi:10.1007/s11263-006-6275-8

16. Yeom, S., D.-S. Lee, J.-Y. Son, M.-K. Jung, Y. Jang, S.-W. Jung, and S.-J. Lee, "Real-time outdoor concealed-object detection with passive millimeter wave imaging," Opt. Express, Vol. 19, 2530-2536, 2011.
doi:10.1364/OE.19.002530

17. Yeom, S., D.-S. Lee, and J.-Y. Son, "Multi-level segmentation of passive millimeter wave images for hidden object detection," Optical Engineering, Vol. 51, 091613, 2012.
doi:10.1117/1.OE.51.9.091613

18. Bishop, C. M., Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition, Chap. 2, Oxford, 1995.

19. Lee, H., D.-S. Lee, S. Yeom, J.-Y. Son, V. P. Guschin, and S.-H. Kim, "Image registration and fusion between passive millimeter wave images and visual images," Journal of the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences, Vol. 36, 349-354, 2011.
doi:10.7840/KICS.2011.36C.6.349

Dr. Seokwon Yeom

Dr. Dongsu Lee

Dr. Hyoung Lee

Dr. Joungyoung Son

Dr. Vladimir P. Gushin