Publications

An informative confidence metric for ATR

Bow, Wallace J.; Bray, Brian K.

Automatic or assisted target recognition (ATR) is an important application of synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Most ATR researchers have focused on the core problem of declaration-that is, detection and identification of targets of interest within a SAR image. For ATR declarations to be of maximum value to an image analyst, however, it is essential that each declaration be accompanied by a reliability estimate or confidence metric. Unfortunately, the need for a clear and informative confidence metric for ATR has generally been overlooked or ignored. We propose a framework and methodology for evaluating the confidence in an ATR system's declarations and competing target hypotheses. Our proposed confidence metric is intuitive, informative, and applicable to a broad class of ATRs. We demonstrate that seemingly similar ATRs may differ fundamentally in the ability-or inability-to identify targets with high confidence.