A method of suppressing background clutter in video imagery of a scene including a foreground target and background clutter includes applying successive images of the video imagery to a clutter suppression process, thereby producing video imagery of a derived scene in which the background clutter is suppressed. This process includes processing the current image to remove a fixed pattern noise associated with the camera, and spatially re-registering the current image to a fixed geolocation or known clutter pattern of the scene in a reference image of the successive images. The process also includes subjecting independent copies of the current image to two infinite impulse response filters having different time constants to produce filtered, time-delayed images, and differencing the filtered images to reduce the background clutter, thereby producing a clutter-suppressed version of the current image in which the background clutter is suppressed with respect to the foreground target.