{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,27]],"date-time":"2026-05-27T17:44:35Z","timestamp":1779903875845,"version":"3.53.1"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"20","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,20]],"date-time":"2023-10-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1697760000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["62106193"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62106193"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2022M712536"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022M712536"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["GKCP2021002"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GKCP2021002"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["JCKY2023230C013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JCKY2023230C013"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation","award":["62106193"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62106193"]}]},{"name":"fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation","award":["2022M712536"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022M712536"]}]},{"name":"fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation","award":["GKCP2021002"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GKCP2021002"]}]},{"name":"fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation","award":["JCKY2023230C013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JCKY2023230C013"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electro-Optical Countermeasures Test &amp; Evaluation Technology Fund","award":["62106193"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62106193"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electro-Optical Countermeasures Test &amp; Evaluation Technology Fund","award":["2022M712536"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022M712536"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electro-Optical Countermeasures Test &amp; Evaluation Technology Fund","award":["GKCP2021002"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GKCP2021002"]}]},{"name":"Key Laboratory of Electro-Optical Countermeasures Test &amp; Evaluation Technology Fund","award":["JCKY2023230C013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JCKY2023230C013"]}]},{"name":"National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security foundation","award":["62106193"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["62106193"]}]},{"name":"National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security foundation","award":["2022M712536"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022M712536"]}]},{"name":"National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security foundation","award":["GKCP2021002"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GKCP2021002"]}]},{"name":"National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security foundation","award":["JCKY2023230C013"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["JCKY2023230C013"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The human visual attention system plays an important role in infrared target recognition because it can quickly and accurately recognize infrared small targets and has good scene adaptability. This paper proposes an infrared small target detection method based on an attention mechanism, which consists of three modules: a bottom-up passive attention module, a top-down active attention module, and decision feedback equalization. In the top-down active attention module, given the Gaussian characteristics of infrared small targets, the idea of combining knowledge-experience Gaussian shape features is applied to implement feature extraction, and quaternion cosine transform is performed to achieve multi-dimensional fusion of Gaussian shape features, thereby achieving complementary fusion of multi-dimensional feature information. In the bottom-up passive attention module, considering that the difference in contrast and motion between the target and the background can attract attention easily, an optimal fast local contrast algorithm and improved circular pipeline filtering are adopted to find candidate target regions. Meanwhile, the multi-scale Laplacian of the Gaussian filter is adopted to estimate the optimal size of the infrared small target. The fast local contrast algorithm based on box filter acceleration and structure optimization is employed to extract local contrast features, and candidate target regions can be obtained by using an adaptive threshold. Besides, the mean gray, target size, Gaussian consistency, and circular region constraint are used in pipeline filtering to extract motion regions, and the false-alarm rate is reduced effectively. Finally, decision feedback equalization is adopted to obtain real targets. Experiments are conducted on some real infrared images involving complex backgrounds with sea, sky, and ground clutters, and the experimental results indicate that the proposed method can achieve better detection performance than conventional baseline methods, such as RLCM, ILCM, PQFT, MPCM, and ADMD. Also, mathematical proofs are provided to validate the proposed method.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s23208608","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,20]],"date-time":"2023-10-20T11:53:56Z","timestamp":1697802836000},"page":"8608","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["An Infrared Small Target Detection Method Based on Attention Mechanism"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Xiaotian","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Unmanned System Research Institute, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi\u2019an 710072, China"},{"name":"School of Information and Communication Engineering, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ruitao","family":"Lu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Missile Engineering, Rocket Force University of Engineering, Xi\u2019an 710025, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Haixia","family":"Bi","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Unmanned System Research Institute, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi\u2019an 710072, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yuhai","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Space Security, Tianjin 300308, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Chen, Q., Wu, C., and Wang, Y. (February, January 27). Robust Principal Component Analysis-Based Infrared Small Target Detection. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Honolulu, HI, USA."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fan, J., Wei, J., Huang, H., Zhang, D., and Chen, C. (2023). IRSDT: A Framework for Infrared Small Target Tracking with Enhanced Detection. Sensors, 23.","DOI":"10.3390\/s23094240"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Xie, F., Dong, M., Wang, X., and Yan, J. (2022). Infrared Small-Target Detection Using Multiscale Local Average Gray Difference Measure. Electronics, 11.","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics11101547"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yao, H., Liu, L., Wei, Y., Chen, D., and Tong, M. (2023). Infrared Small-Target Detection Using Multidirectional Local Difference Measure Weighted by Entropy. Sustainability, 15.","DOI":"10.3390\/su15031902"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3037","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.2017.2660879","article-title":"Robust Infrared Maritime Target Detection Based on Visual Attention and Spatiotemporal Filtering","volume":"55","author":"Dong","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3752","DOI":"10.1109\/JSTARS.2017.2700023","article-title":"Reweighted Infrared Patch-Tensor Model with Both Nonlocal and Local Priors for Single-Frame Small Target Detection","volume":"10","author":"Dai","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE J. Sel. Top. Appl. Earth Obs. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"9813","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.2020.3044958","article-title":"Attentional Local Contrast Networks for Infrared Small Target Detection","volume":"59","author":"Dai","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"527","DOI":"10.1049\/iet-cvi.2017.0327","article-title":"Flying small target detection in IR images based on adaptive toggle operator","volume":"12","author":"Marvasti","year":"2018","journal-title":"IET Comput. Vis."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1700","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2017.2729512","article-title":"Infrared small target detection via nonnegativity-constrained variational mode decomposition","volume":"14","author":"Wang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Achanta, R., Hemami, S., Estrada, F., and Susstrunk, S. (2009, January 20\u201325). Frequency-tuned salient region detection. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Miami, FL, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CVPR.2009.5206596"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2017.03.006","article-title":"Content based image retrieval with sparse representations and local feature descriptors: A comparative study","volume":"68","author":"Celik","year":"2017","journal-title":"Pattern Recognit."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"98","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2014.10.022","article-title":"Small infrared target detection based on low-rank and sparse representation","volume":"68","author":"He","year":"2015","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zhang, L.D., Peng, L.B., Zhang, T.F., Cao, S.Y., and Peng, Z.M. (2018). Infrared small target detection via nonconvex rank approximation minimization Joint\/2,1 norm. Remote Sens., 10.","DOI":"10.3390\/rs10111821"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"474","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2016.03.023","article-title":"Infrared Small Target Detect. Algorithm Based High-Speed Local Contrast Method","volume":"76","author":"Cui","year":"2016","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2018.12.007","article-title":"Dim Small Infrared Target Fast Detect. Guid. By Vis. Saliency","volume":"97","author":"Yi","year":"2019","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"92","DOI":"10.1109\/TFUZZ.2019.2912576","article-title":"Fuzzified Image Enhancement for Deep Learning in Iris Recognition","volume":"28","author":"Liu","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Syst."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1442","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2019.2898893","article-title":"A local contrast method combined with adaptive background estimation for infrared small target detection","volume":"16","author":"Han","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4996","DOI":"10.1109\/TIP.2013.2281420","article-title":"Infrared Patch-Image Model for Small Target Detection in a Single Image","volume":"22","author":"Gao","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Image Process."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1254","DOI":"10.1109\/34.730558","article-title":"A model of saliency-based visual attention for rapid scene analysis","volume":"20","author":"Itti","year":"1998","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"513","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2012.08.004","article-title":"Infrared dim target detection based on visual attention","volume":"55","author":"Wang","year":"2012","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"574","DOI":"10.1109\/TGRS.2013.2242477","article-title":"A Local Contrast Method for Small Infrared Target Detection","volume":"52","author":"Chen","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2168","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2014.2323236","article-title":"A Robust Infrared Small Target Detection Algorithm Based on Human Visual System","volume":"11","author":"Han","year":"2014","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1258","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2019.2943141","article-title":"Small Infrared Target Detection Based on Local Difference Adaptive Measure","volume":"17","author":"Li","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"612","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2018.2790909","article-title":"Infrared Small Target Detection Utilizing the Multiscale Relative Local Contrast Measure","volume":"15","author":"Han","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"110003","DOI":"10.3788\/gzxb20204901.0110003","article-title":"Infrared Small Target Detection Based on Double-layer Local Contrast Measure","volume":"49","author":"Pan","year":"2020","journal-title":"Acta Photonica Sin."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"186","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2018.03.006","article-title":"An Infrared Small Target Detection Method Based on Multiscale Local Homogeneity Measure","volume":"90","author":"Nie","year":"2018","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"88","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2017.12.018","article-title":"Infrared small target detection based on local intensity and gradient properties","volume":"89","author":"Zhang","year":"2017","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"33","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2017.2772030","article-title":"High-Boost-Based Multiscale Local Contrast Measure for Infrared Small Target Detection","volume":"15","author":"Shi","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"216","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2016.04.002","article-title":"Multiscale patch-based contrast measure for small infrared target detection","volume":"58","author":"Wei","year":"2016","journal-title":"Pattern Recognit."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1670","DOI":"10.1109\/LGRS.2020.3004978","article-title":"Infrared Small Target Detection Based on the Weighted Strengthened Local Contrast Measure","volume":"18","author":"Han","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Lett."},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"107727","DOI":"10.1016\/j.sigpro.2020.107727","article-title":"Fast and robust small infrared target detection using absolute directional mean difference algorithm\u2014ScienceDirect","volume":"177","author":"Moradi","year":"2020","journal-title":"Signal Process."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yao, S., Zhu, Q., Zhang, T., Cui, W., and Yan, P. (2022). Infrared Image Small-Target Detection Based on Improved FCOS and Spatio-Temporal Features. Electronics, 11.","DOI":"10.3390\/electronics11060933"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"103659","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2021.103659","article-title":"ISTDet: An efficient end-to-end neural network for infrared small target detection","volume":"114","author":"Ju","year":"2021","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."},{"key":"ref_34","first-page":"2981","article-title":"Quaternion Markov Splicing Detection for Color Images Based on Quaternion Discrete Cosine Transform","volume":"14","author":"Wang","year":"2020","journal-title":"KSII Trans. Internet Inf. Syst."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"118813","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eswa.2022.118813","article-title":"Robust small infrared target detection using multi-scale contrast fuzzy discriminant segmentation","volume":"212","author":"Wang","year":"2023","journal-title":"Expert Syst. Appl."},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"128","DOI":"10.1016\/j.infrared.2018.10.033","article-title":"An effective infrared small target detection method based on the human visual attention","volume":"95","author":"Chen","year":"2018","journal-title":"Infrared Phys. Technol."}],"container-title":["Sensors"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/23\/20\/8608\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,10]],"date-time":"2025-10-10T21:09:20Z","timestamp":1760130560000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1424-8220\/23\/20\/8608"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,20]]},"references-count":36,"journal-issue":{"issue":"20","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,10]]}},"alternative-id":["s23208608"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/s23208608","relation":{},"ISSN":["1424-8220"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1424-8220","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,20]]}}}