The United Nations estimates there are over 100 million land mines on the earth. The Defence Research & Development Canada (Suffield) is playing a leading role in finding ways to safely conduct humanitarian demining. In conjunction with DRDC, ITRES is supporting this work by carrying out research into standoff optical detection of tripwires, which are frequently used to detonate land mines. A prototype digital camera has been developed to investigate detection in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared spectral regions.
DRDC Suffield and ITRES successfully concluded a three year test program to develop a real-time vehicle based surface landmine detection system utilizing the CASI sensor. Real time detection includes the radiometric correction of the CASI hyperspectral image and the subsequent application to several mine detection algorithms to generate ‘mine’ location maps.