title: Spatial statistics of natural-terrain imagery. I. Non-Gaussian IR backgrounds and long-range correlations.
abstract: We report on an analysis of statistical correlations in midwave IR imagery acquired from an airborne sensor flying over dense forest and sparsely covered terrain. We test for wide-sense stationarity, compute ensemble histograms, and estimate the autocovariance functions with associated error bars. We find that the statistics are stationary but non-Gaussian. Contrary to previous studies, we do not find that the correlations are described by decaying exponential functions. In fact, we find evidence for long-range correlations in the imagery, with autocovariance functions described by a relatively simple formula with power-law falloff.
authors.forename: D C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Bertilone
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Caprari
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Angeli
authors.forename: G N
authors.initials: GN
authors.lastname: Newsam