Infrared small target detection using reinforced MSER-induced saliency measure

•An effective infrared small target detection scheme is proposed in this paper.•The proposed scheme is based on a reinforced MSER-induced saliency measure.•The MGSM is computed to suppress regular background clutters.•The MLSM is calculated to eliminate strong clutter interferences.•The small targets can be effectively detected by integrating MGSM and MLSM.