GETNET: A General End-to-end Two-dimensional CNN Framework for Hyperspectral Image Change Detection

Change detection (CD) is an important application of remote sensing, which provides timely change information about large-scale Earth surface. With the emergence of hyperspectral imagery, CD technology has been greatly promoted, as hyperspectral data with the highspectral resolution are capable of detecting finer changes than using the traditional multispectral imagery. Nevertheless, the high dimension of hyperspectral data makes it difficult to implement traditional CD algorithms. Besides, endmember abundance information at subpixel level is often not fully utilized. In order to better handle high dimension problem and explore abundance information, this paper presents a General End-to-end Two-dimensional CNN (GETNET) framework for hyperspectral image change detection (HSI-CD). The main contributions of this work are threefold: 1) Mixed-affinity matrix that integrates subpixel representation is introduced to mine more cross-channel gradient features and fuse multi-source information; 2) 2-D CNN is designed to learn the discriminative features effectively from multi-source data at a higher level and enhance the generalization ability of the proposed CD algorithm; 3) A new HSI-CD data set is designed for the objective comparison of different methods. Experimental results on real hyperspectral data sets demonstrate the proposed method outperforms most of the state-of-the-arts

Deep learning in remote sensing: a review

Standing at the paradigm shift towards data-intensive science, machine learning techniques are becoming increasingly important. In particular, as a major breakthrough in the field, deep learning has proven as an extremely powerful tool in many fields. Shall we embrace deep learning as the key to all? Or, should we resist a 'black-box' solution? There are controversial opinions in the remote sensing community. In this article, we analyze the challenges of using deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, review the recent advances, and provide resources to make deep learning in remote sensing ridiculously simple to start with. More importantly, we advocate remote sensing scientists to bring their expertise into deep learning, and use it as an implicit general model to tackle unprecedented large-scale influential challenges, such as climate change and urbanization.Comment: Accepted for publication IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazin

A Comprehensive Survey of Deep Learning in Remote Sensing: Theories, Tools and Challenges for the Community

In recent years, deep learning (DL), a re-branding of neural networks (NNs), has risen to the top in numerous areas, namely computer vision (CV), speech recognition, natural language processing, etc. Whereas remote sensing (RS) possesses a number of unique challenges, primarily related to sensors and applications, inevitably RS draws from many of the same theories as CV; e.g., statistics, fusion, and machine learning, to name a few. This means that the RS community should be aware of, if not at the leading edge of, of advancements like DL. Herein, we provide the most comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art RS DL research. We also review recent new developments in the DL field that can be used in DL for RS. Namely, we focus on theories, tools and challenges for the RS community. Specifically, we focus on unsolved challenges and opportunities as it relates to (i) inadequate data sets, (ii) human-understandable solutions for modelling physical phenomena, (iii) Big Data, (iv) non-traditional heterogeneous data sources, (v) DL architectures and learning algorithms for spectral, spatial and temporal data, (vi) transfer learning, (vii) an improved theoretical understanding of DL systems, (viii) high barriers to entry, and (ix) training and optimizing the DL.Comment: 64 pages, 411 references. To appear in Journal of Applied Remote Sensin

Hyperspectral Imaging for Landmine Detection

This PhD thesis aims at investigating the possibility to detect landmines using hyperspectral imaging. Using this technology, we are able to acquire at each pixel of the image spectral data in hundreds of wavelengths. So, at each pixel we obtain a reflectance spectrum that is used as fingerprint to identify the materials in each pixel, and mainly in our project help us to detect the presence of landmines. The proposed process works as follows: a preconfigured drone (hexarotor or octorotor) will carry the hyperspectral camera. This programmed drone is responsible of flying over the contaminated area in order to take images from a safe distance. Various image processing techniques will be used to treat the image in order to isolate the landmine from the surrounding. Once the presence of a mine or explosives is suspected, an alarm signal is sent to the base station giving information about the type of the mine, its location and the clear path that could be taken by the mine removal team in order to disarm the mine. This technology has advantages over the actually used techniques: • It is safer because it limits the need of humans in the searching process and gives the opportunity to the demining team to detect the mines while they are in a safe region. • It is faster. A larger area could be cleared in a single day by comparison with demining techniques • This technique can be used to detect at the same time objects other than mines such oil or minerals. First, a presentation of the problem of landmines that is expanding worldwide referring to some statistics from the UN organizations is provided. In addition, a brief presentation of different types of landmines is shown. Unfortunately, new landmines are well camouflaged and are mainly made of plastic in order to make their detection using metal detectors harder. A summary of all landmine detection techniques is shown to give an idea about the advantages and disadvantages of each technique. In this work, we give an overview of different projects that worked on the detection of landmines using hyperspectral imaging. We will show the main results achieved in this field and future work to be done in order to make this technology effective. Moreover, we worked on different target detection algorithms in order to achieve high probability of detection with low false alarm rate. We tested different statistical and linear unmixing based methods. In addition, we introduced the use of radial basis function neural networks in order to detect landmines at subpixel level. A comparative study between different detection methods will be shown in the thesis. A study of the effect of dimensionality reduction using principal component analysis prior to classification is also provided. The study shows the dependency between the two steps (feature extraction and target detection). The selection of target detection algorithm will define if feature extraction in previous phase is necessary. A field experiment has been done in order to study how the spectral signature of landmine will change depending on the environment in which the mine is planted. For this, we acquired the spectral signature of 6 types of landmines in different conditions: in Lab where specific source of light is used; in field where mines are covered by grass; and when mines are buried in soil. The results of this experiment are very interesting. The signature of two types of landmines are used in the simulations. They are a database necessary for supervised detection of landmines. Also we extracted some spectral characteristics of landmines that would help us to distinguish mines from background

Hyperspectral colon tissue cell classification

A novel algorithm to discriminate between normal and malignant tissue cells of the human colon is presented. The microscopic level images of human colon tissue cells were acquired using hyperspectral imaging technology at contiguous wavelength intervals of visible light. While hyperspectral imagery data provides a wealth of information, its large size normally means high computational processing complexity. Several methods exist to avoid the so-called curse of dimensionality and hence reduce the computational complexity. In this study, we experimented with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and two modifications of Independent Component Analysis (ICA). In the first stage of the algorithm, the extracted components are used to separate four constituent parts of the colon tissue: nuclei, cytoplasm, lamina propria, and lumen. The segmentation is performed in an unsupervised fashion using the nearest centroid clustering algorithm. The segmented image is further used, in the second stage of the classification algorithm, to exploit the spatial relationship between the labeled constituent parts. Experimental results using supervised Support Vector Machines (SVM) classification based on multiscale morphological features reveal the discrimination between normal and malignant tissue cells with a reasonable degree of accuracy