Review of camouflage assessment techniques

Review of camouflage assessment techniques: paper

Toet, A.
Hogervorst, M.A.

2019

In military operations signature reduction techniques such as camouflage nets, low-emissive paints, and camouflage patterns are typically deployed to optimize the survivability of high value assets by minimizing their detectability. Various methods have been developed to assess the effectiveness of these camouflage measures. There are three main approaches to the evaluation of camouflage measures: (1) a subjective approach through observer experiments, (2) an objective computational approach through image analysis, and (3) an objective approach through physical measurements. Although subjective evaluation methods have a direct relation with the operational practice, they are often difficult to implement because of time and budget restrictions (these experiments typically require a lot of observers, repetitions and different targets and backgrounds), or simply because the associated conditions are not safe for the observers. The objective evaluation methods are typically based on the outcome of psychophysical laboratory experiments using simple artificial stimuli, presented under extremely restricted (impoverished) conditions, and in different experimental paradigms. Other objective methods are based on signal processing techniques and have no obvious counterpart in human vision. Only a few attempts have been made to validate any of these objective metrics against the performance of human observers in realistic military scenarios. As a result, there are currently no standard and internationally accepted methods and procedures to evaluate camouflage equipment and techniques, and to indicate their military effectiveness. In this review paper we present an overview of the various subjective (psychophysical) and objective (computational, image or video based) evaluation methods that are currently available and that have been used to validate camouflage effectiveness. In addition, we discuss the relative merits of field experiments versus laboratory experiments.

Camouflage
Clutter
Evaluation methods
Observer experiments
Saliency
Search
Budget control
Military operations
Computational approach
Laboratory experiments
Objective approaches
Objective evaluation
Operational practices
Physical measurement
Signal processing technique
Subjective evaluations

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:20b1fc0d-d9d5-4821-ae03-054fae7f5dfa

https://doi.org/10.14339/sto-mp-sci-319-07-pdf

869556

Signature Management Systems Concepts and Integration (SCI) Panel SCI-319 Symposium on ‘Signature Management’ Brno, Czech Republic, 7-8 May 2019, 1-36

article