VY CORP — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: AF18B-T007

Description

We propose to detect and identify moving objects in airborne imagery and full-motion video in unconstrained environments. Conventional techniques result in too many false positives; a new topology is needed to automatically detect and identify moving targets from a moving platform in airborne imagery. Our software is designed to analyze video imagery and deliver curve metadata that can be organized into an SQL database of relevant objects and regions of interest. This is accomplished utilizing scale- and angle- invariant Bezier curves. Effectively, we are taking image analysis out of the realm of pixels, and into more reliable mathematical models; we call this method Shape-Based Modeling Segmentation (SBMS). SBMS Bezier elements have a marked tendency to discover and “attach� to orderly edges in images without training; this is a result of Vy’s underlying order-recognition algorithm that rejects gradient edges that fail a test for continuity and differentiability. Groups of Bezier elements discovered in this way can be associated based on their spatial alignment, conformation to object models (such as ellipses and other closed contours), and photometric similarity; these discovery and filtration techniques can then be combined orthogonally.