A real-time LiDAR image processing system for ground target detection based on multi-core Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) is proposed.On the basis of detailed analysis of the source consumption for each algorithm module,the hardware circuit for the algorithm is then designed,and a parallel processing system is implemented using the master-slaver architecture.Each image is first divided into several partitions,and each partitioned image is then assigned to one of the four DSP cores for further processing.Moreover,the parallel system is then extended to a dual-core system and also a six-core system.Their performances are further compared with that of the single-core system.Experimental results show that it only takes 50 ms to process a frame image by using the designed system,so it can meet the real-time requirement.For processing system with fixed computational load,the improvement in computational efficiency will be limited if only the strategy of increasing the number of cores is adopted in the system.Once the computational efficiency cannot be further improved by adding more cores,research emphasis should be shifted towards the direction of how to reduce the computational load in each core.