Identifiability of the Simplex Volume Minimization Criterion for Blind Hyperspectral Unmixing: The No Pure-Pixel Case

In blind hyperspectral unmixing (HU), the pure-pixel assumption is well-known to be powerful in enabling simple and effective blind HU solutions. However, the pure-pixel assumption is not always satisfied in an exact sense, especially for scenarios where pixels are heavily mixed. In the no pure-pixel case, a good blind HU approach to consider is the minimum volume enclosing simplex (MVES). Empirical experience has suggested that MVES algorithms can perform well without pure pixels, although it was not totally clear why this is true from a theoretical viewpoint. This paper aims to address the latter issue. We develop an analysis framework wherein the perfect endmember identifiability of MVES is studied under the noiseless case. We prove that MVES is indeed robust against lack of pure pixels, as long as the pixels do not get too heavily mixed and too asymmetrically spread. The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulations

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

HALS-based NMF with Flexible Constraints for Hyperspectral Unmixing

International audienceIn this article, the hyperspectral unmixing problem is solved with the nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm. The regularized criterion is minimized with a hierarchical alternating least squares (HALS) scheme. Under the HALS framework, four constraints are introduced to improve the unmixing accuracy, including the sum-to-unity constraint, the constraints for minimum spectral dispersion and maximum spatial dispersion, and the minimum volume constraint. The derived algorithm is called F-NMF, for NMF with flexible constraints. We experimentally compare F-NMF with different constraints and combined ones. We test the sensitivity and robustness of F-NMF to many parameters such as the purity level of endmembers, the number of endmembers and pixels, the SNR, the sparsity level of abundances, and the overestimation of endmembers. The proposed algorithm improves the results estimated by vertex component analysis. A comparative analysis on real data is included. The unmixing results given by a geometrical method, the simplex identification via split augmented Lagrangian and the F-NMF algorithms with combined constraints are compared, which shows the relative stability of F-NMF

Nonparametric Detection of Nonlinearly Mixed Pixels and Endmember Estimation in Hyperspectral Images

International audienceMixing phenomena in hyperspectral images depend on a variety of factors, such as the resolution of observation devices, the properties of materials, and how these materials interact with incident light in the scene. Different parametric and nonparametric models have been considered to address hyperspectral unmixing problems. The simplest one is the linear mixing model. Nevertheless, it has been recognized that the mixing phenomena can also be nonlinear. The corresponding nonlinear analysis techniques are necessarily more challenging and complex than those employed for linear unmixing. Within this context, it makes sense to detect the nonlinearly mixed pixels in an image prior to its analysis, and then employ the simplest possible unmixing technique to analyze each pixel. In this paper, we propose a technique for detecting nonlinearly mixed pixels. The detection approach is based on the comparison of the reconstruction errors using both a Gaussian process regression model and a linear regression model. The two errors are combined into a detection statistics for which a probability density function can be reasonably approximated. We also propose an iterative endmember extraction algorithm to be employed in combination with the detection algorithm. The proposed detect-then-unmix strategy, which consists of extracting endmembers, detecting nonlinearly mixed pixels and unmixing, is tested with synthetic and real images