Kestrel Land MTI permits increased ISR Coverage from Airborne Full Motion Video (FMV)

Orlando, Fl. – 28 April 2011 – At the SPIE Defense, Security + Sensing Conference, Sentient today shares the results of a study undertaken into the effects of minimum target size and other factors on the performance envelope of automated Moving Target Indication (MTI) systems for airborne surveillance with electro-optical (EO) sensors. The detection of small targets is critical to the performance of an MTI system. Sentient’s Kestrel Land MTI software solution was used in the study and shown to reliably detect small moving targets down to 2×2 pixels in size. Detecting dismounts and vehicles at this resolution enables significantly greater surveillance coverage than can be achieved by systems having minimum target detection size of 10×10 pixels or greater. “This study validates the improvement in ISR mission coverage and target detection reliability that can be achieved with the latest MTI solutions,” states Dr Paul Boxer, Managing Director at Sentient. “Automatically detecting movement of small targets, such as dismounts or camouflaged vehicles, over a wider area greatly increases the effectiveness of ISR missions.” In the study, Sentient used a Ground Truth Database (GTD) containing FMV imagery sourced from a wide variety of ISR missions, including from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The imagery was gathered by diverse aerial platforms, ranging from small, tactical, MALE/HALE UAVs and manned surveillance aircraft. Kestrel Land MTI is a plug and play software solution that processes EO and infrared (IR) FMV from manned and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With hundreds of operational hours in theatre, Kestrel Land MTI acts as a capability multiplier for many ISR missions. Currently, the solution is deployed in Afghanistan in support of both Australian Army and Air Force operations.