Estimating the number of endmembers in hyperspectral images using the normal compositional model and a hierarchical Bayesian algorithm.

This paper studies a semi-supervised Bayesian unmixing algorithm for hyperspectral images. This algorithm is based on the normal compositional model recently introduced by Eismann and Stein. The normal compositional model assumes that each pixel of the image is modeled as a linear combination of an unknown number of pure materials, called endmembers. However, contrary to the classical linear mixing model, these endmembers are supposed to be random in order to model uncertainties regarding their knowledge. This paper proposes to estimate the mixture coefficients of the Normal Compositional Model (referred to as abundances) as well as their number using a reversible jump Bayesian algorithm. The performance of the proposed methodology is evaluated thanks to simulations conducted on synthetic and real AVIRIS images

Nonlinear unmixing of hyperspectral images: Models and algorithms

When considering the problem of unmixing hyperspectral images, most of the literature in the geoscience and image processing areas relies on the widely used linear mixing model (LMM). However, the LMM may be not valid, and other nonlinear models need to be considered, for instance, when there are multiscattering effects or intimate interactions. Consequently, over the last few years, several significant contributions have been proposed to overcome the limitations inherent in the LMM. In this article, we present an overview of recent advances in nonlinear unmixing modeling

Hyperspectral Unmixing Overview: Geometrical, Statistical, and Sparse Regression-Based Approaches

Imaging spectrometers measure electromagnetic energy scattered in their instantaneous field view in hundreds or thousands of spectral channels with higher spectral resolution than multispectral cameras. Imaging spectrometers are therefore often referred to as hyperspectral cameras (HSCs). Higher spectral resolution enables material identification via spectroscopic analysis, which facilitates countless applications that require identifying materials in scenarios unsuitable for classical spectroscopic analysis. Due to low spatial resolution of HSCs, microscopic material mixing, and multiple scattering, spectra measured by HSCs are mixtures of spectra of materials in a scene. Thus, accurate estimation requires unmixing. Pixels are assumed to be mixtures of a few materials, called endmembers. Unmixing involves estimating all or some of: the number of endmembers, their spectral signatures, and their abundances at each pixel. Unmixing is a challenging, ill-posed inverse problem because of model inaccuracies, observation noise, environmental conditions, endmember variability, and data set size. Researchers have devised and investigated many models searching for robust, stable, tractable, and accurate unmixing algorithms. This paper presents an overview of unmixing methods from the time of Keshava and Mustard's unmixing tutorial [1] to the present. Mixing models are first discussed. Signal-subspace, geometrical, statistical, sparsity-based, and spatial-contextual unmixing algorithms are described. Mathematical problems and potential solutions are described. Algorithm characteristics are illustrated experimentally.Comment: This work has been accepted for publication in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensin

Adaptive Markov random fields for joint unmixing and segmentation of hyperspectral image

Linear spectral unmixing is a challenging problem in hyperspectral imaging that consists of decomposing an observed pixel into a linear combination of pure spectra (or endmembers) with their corresponding proportions (or abundances). Endmember extraction algorithms can be employed for recovering the spectral signatures while abundances are estimated using an inversion step. Recent works have shown that exploiting spatial dependencies between image pixels can improve spectral unmixing. Markov random fields (MRF) are classically used to model these spatial correlations and partition the image into multiple classes with homogeneous abundances. This paper proposes to define the MRF sites using similarity regions. These regions are built using a self-complementary area filter that stems from the morphological theory. This kind of filter divides the original image into flat zones where the underlying pixels have the same spectral values. Once the MRF has been clearly established, a hierarchical Bayesian algorithm is proposed to estimate the abundances, the class labels, the noise variance, and the corresponding hyperparameters. A hybrid Gibbs sampler is constructed to generate samples according to the corresponding posterior distribution of the unknown parameters and hyperparameters. Simulations conducted on synthetic and real AVIRIS data demonstrate the good performance of the algorithm

Bayesian Nonparametric Unmixing of Hyperspectral Images

Hyperspectral imaging is an important tool in remote sensing, allowing for accurate analysis of vast areas. Due to a low spatial resolution, a pixel of a hyperspectral image rarely represents a single material, but rather a mixture of different spectra. HSU aims at estimating the pure spectra present in the scene of interest, referred to as endmembers, and their fractions in each pixel, referred to as abundances. Today, many HSU algorithms have been proposed, based either on a geometrical or statistical model. While most methods assume that the number of endmembers present in the scene is known, there is only little work about estimating this number from the observed data. In this work, we propose a Bayesian nonparametric framework that jointly estimates the number of endmembers, the endmembers itself, and their abundances, by making use of the Indian Buffet Process as a prior for the endmembers. Simulation results and experiments on real data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, yielding results comparable with state-of-the-art methods while being able to reliably infer the number of endmembers. In scenarios with strong noise, where other algorithms provide only poor results, the proposed approach tends to overestimate the number of endmembers slightly. The additional endmembers, however, often simply represent noisy replicas of present endmembers and could easily be merged in a post-processing step

Supervised Nonlinear Unmixing of Hyperspectral Images Using a Pre-image Methods

This book is a collection of 19 articles which reflect the courses given at the Collège de France/Summer school “Reconstruction d'images − Applications astrophysiques“ held in Nice and Fréjus, France, from June 18 to 22, 2012. The articles presented in this volume address emerging concepts and methods that are useful in the complex process of improving our knowledge of the celestial objects, including Earth