Small target detection plays a crucial role in infrared warning and tracking systems. A background suppression method using morphological filter based on quantum genetic algorithm (QGMF) is presented to detect small targets in infrared image. Structure element of morphological filter is encoded and the best structure element is selected using quantum genetic algorithm. The optimized structure element is used for background suppression to detect small target. Experimental results demonstrate that QGMF has good performance in clutter suppression, and obtains higher signal-to-clutter ratio gain (...