Background modeling for moving object detection in long-distance imaging through turbulent medium

A basic step in automatic moving objects detection is often modeling the background (i.e., the scene excluding the moving objects). The background model describes the temporal intensity distribution expected at different image locations. Long-distance imaging through atmospheric turbulent medium is affected mainly by blur and spatiotemporal movements in the image, which have contradicting effects on the temporal intensity distribution, mainly at edge locations. This paper addresses this modeling problem theoretically, and experimentally, for various long-distance imaging conditions. Results show that a unimodal distribution is usually a more appropriate model. However, if image deblurring is performed, a multimodal modeling might be more appropriate.