1. A surveillance system for detecting a foreign object, debris, or damage (FOD) on a runway, comprising: one or more cameras for capturing electronic images of the runway; and an image processing system for detecting the FOD on the runway based on adaptive image processing of the electronic images captured by the cameras and for applying image enhancement to eliminate areas of the captured electronic images having gradual grayscale change in a direction parallel to the runway, to eliminate runway white lines and to enhance features having high grayscale gradient in the direction parallel to the runway in the captured electronic images, wherein the image processing system is configured to subject the captured electronic images to background learning after the image enhancement is applied, and generate a composite background edge map during the background learning, the composite background edge map comprising an adaptive background edge map, a previously learned and saved day or night background edge map, and a seasonal marking map generated for a particular season or weather condition, wherein the surveillance system is adaptively operable for FOD detection under both day and night ambient light conditions without assisted illumination including infrared or laser illuminators, wherein the image processing system is configured to generate a robust edge map comprising selected pixels from the captured electronic images, wherein the image processing system is configured to compare the composite background edge map and the robust edge map, and remove background edges to extract a suspected edge map of FOD.