Recognizing target variants and articulations in synthetic aperture radar images

The focus of this paper is recognizing articulated vehicles acid actual veh icle configuration variants in real synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Using SAR scattering-center locations and magnitudes as features, the invar iance of these features is shown with articulation (e.g., rotation of a tan k turret), with configuration variants, and with a small change in depressi on angle. This scatterer-location and magnitude quasiinvariance is used as a basis for development of a SAR recognition system that successfully ident ifies real articulated and nonstandard-configuration vehicles based on nona rticulated, standard recognition models. Identification performance results are presented as vote-space scatterplots and receiver operating characteri stic curves for configuration variants, for articulated objects, and for a small change in depression angle with the MSTAR public data. (C) 2000 Socie ty of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. [S0091-3286(00)03403-6].