At FOI, former FOA, a research program has been running since 1994 with the purpose to use optical systems to detect buried as well as surface laid landmines. An optical system offers the possibility to scan a large area from an airborne or elevated platform. The work focuses on the possibilities to use infrared imaging systems. It is important not to limit the detection effort to mines only, but also to all kind of objects that can serve as indicator of presence, or absence, of mines and minefields. Signal/image processing, experiments, and modelling/simulations are research areas applied on the problem. FOI was one of seven partners in the EU project ARC, airborne minefield area reduction. The project was running from 2001 to 2003 and gave invaluable experience of development of a complex system, international cooperation and detection challenges in real minefields. This report sums the work of the optical mine detection group at FOI so far and is written as an introduction to future work in the area. The aim is to report the multidisciplinary character of the research connected to the application, rather than presenting deep results.