1. A system for object detection via attentional mechanisms, the system comprising: one or more processors and a non-transitory computer-readable medium having executable instructions encoded thereon such that when executed, the one or more processors perform operations of: receiving a multi-band image as input, the multi-band image having a size; performing an anti-aliasing process and a downsampling process to reduce the size of the multi-band image; performing targeted contrast enhancement on the multi-band image to enhance at least one target color of interest; generating a response map for each target color of interest; processing each response map independently through a saliency process to generate at least one saliency map; converting the at least one saliency map into a set of detections representing potential objects of interest, wherein each detection in the set of detections is associated with a plurality of parameters selected from the group consisting of: position parameters, size parameters, an orientation parameter, and a score parameter; filtering the set of detections in a post-processing process to reduce false alarms, resulting in a final set of detections; and outputting the final set of detections and their associated plurality of parameters representing objects of interest.