Search and detection modeling of military imaging systems

This paper provides an overview of research in search and detection modeling of military imaging systems. For more than forty-five years the US Army Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD) and others have been working to model the performance of infrared imagers in an effort to link imaging system design parameters to observer-sensor performance in the field. The widely used ACQUIRE model accomplished this by linking the minimum resolvable contrast of the sensor to field performance. From the original hypothesis put forth by John Johnson in 1958, to modeling time limited search, to modeling the impact of motion on target detection, to modeling target acquisition performance in different spectral bands, search has a wide and varied history. This paper will first describe the search-modeling task and then give a description of various topics in search and detection over the years. Some of the topics to be discussed will be classic search, clutter, computational vision models and the ACQUIRE model with its variants. It is hoped that this overview will provide both the novice and experienced search modeler alike with a useful summary and a glance at current issues and future challenges.