Abstract: For the infrared image with characteristics of low contrast and low signal-to-noise， an algorithm for infrared target enhancement and segmentation, which is based on the lifting scheme wavelet transform and the snake model, is presented. Firstly, the lifting scheme wavelet transform is adopted to enhance the infrared image, and then the snake model is utilized to extract target edge information. Finally，the infrared image enhancement and segmentation is achieved . The experi- mental result validates that the presented method can achieve good results compared with other methods.

Key words: lifting scheme wavelet transform, snake model, image enhancement and segmentation, infrared image