Implementation strategies for hyperspectral unmixing using Bayesian source separation

Bayesian Positive Source Separation (BPSS) is a useful unsupervised approach for hyperspectral data unmixing, where numerical non-negativity of spectra and abundances has to be ensured, such in remote sensing. Moreover, it is sensible to impose a sum-to-one (full additivity) constraint to the estimated source abundances in each pixel. Even though non-negativity and full additivity are two necessary properties to get physically interpretable results, the use of BPSS algorithms has been so far limited by high computation time and large memory requirements due to the Markov chain Monte Carlo calculations. An implementation strategy which allows one to apply these algorithms on a full hyperspectral image, as typical in Earth and Planetary Science, is introduced. Effects of pixel selection, the impact of such sampling on the relevance of the estimated component spectra and abundance maps, as well as on the computation times, are discussed. For that purpose, two different dataset have been used: a synthetic one and a real hyperspectral image from Mars.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing in the special issue on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing (WHISPERS

Advances in Hyperspectral Image Classification: Earth monitoring with statistical learning methods

Hyperspectral images show similar statistical properties to natural grayscale or color photographic images. However, the classification of hyperspectral images is more challenging because of the very high dimensionality of the pixels and the small number of labeled examples typically available for learning. These peculiarities lead to particular signal processing problems, mainly characterized by indetermination and complex manifolds. The framework of statistical learning has gained popularity in the last decade. New methods have been presented to account for the spatial homogeneity of images, to include user's interaction via active learning, to take advantage of the manifold structure with semisupervised learning, to extract and encode invariances, or to adapt classifiers and image representations to unseen yet similar scenes. This tutuorial reviews the main advances for hyperspectral remote sensing image classification through illustrative examples.Comment: IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 201

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

Non-convex regularization in remote sensing

In this paper, we study the effect of different regularizers and their implications in high dimensional image classification and sparse linear unmixing. Although kernelization or sparse methods are globally accepted solutions for processing data in high dimensions, we present here a study on the impact of the form of regularization used and its parametrization. We consider regularization via traditional squared (2) and sparsity-promoting (1) norms, as well as more unconventional nonconvex regularizers (p and Log Sum Penalty). We compare their properties and advantages on several classification and linear unmixing tasks and provide advices on the choice of the best regularizer for the problem at hand. Finally, we also provide a fully functional toolbox for the community.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure

Advances in Hyperspectral Image Classification Methods for Vegetation and Agricultural Cropland Studies

Hyperspectral data are becoming more widely available via sensors on airborne and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms, as well as proximal platforms. While space-based hyperspectral data continue to be limited in availability, multiple spaceborne Earth-observing missions on traditional platforms are scheduled for launch, and companies are experimenting with small satellites for constellations to observe the Earth, as well as for planetary missions. Land cover mapping via classification is one of the most important applications of hyperspectral remote sensing and will increase in significance as time series of imagery are more readily available. However, while the narrow bands of hyperspectral data provide new opportunities for chemistry-based modeling and mapping, challenges remain. Hyperspectral data are high dimensional, and many bands are highly correlated or irrelevant for a given classification problem. For supervised classification methods, the quantity of training data is typically limited relative to the dimension of the input space. The resulting Hughes phenomenon, often referred to as the curse of dimensionality, increases potential for unstable parameter estimates, overfitting, and poor generalization of classifiers. This is particularly problematic for parametric approaches such as Gaussian maximum likelihoodbased classifiers that have been the backbone of pixel-based multispectral classification methods. This issue has motivated investigation of alternatives, including regularization of the class covariance matrices, ensembles of weak classifiers, development of feature selection and extraction methods, adoption of nonparametric classifiers, and exploration of methods to exploit unlabeled samples via semi-supervised and active learning. Data sets are also quite large, motivating computationally efficient algorithms and implementations. This chapter provides an overview of the recent advances in classification methods for mapping vegetation using hyperspectral data. Three data sets that are used in the hyperspectral classification literature (e.g., Botswana Hyperion satellite data and AVIRIS airborne data over both Kennedy Space Center and Indian Pines) are described in Section 3.2 and used to illustrate methods described in the chapter. An additional high-resolution hyperspectral data set acquired by a SpecTIR sensor on an airborne platform over the Indian Pines area is included to exemplify the use of new deep learning approaches, and a multiplatform example of airborne hyperspectral data is provided to demonstrate transfer learning in hyperspectral image classification. Classical approaches for supervised and unsupervised feature selection and extraction are reviewed in Section 3.3. In particular, nonlinearities exhibited in hyperspectral imagery have motivated development of nonlinear feature extraction methods in manifold learning, which are outlined in Section 3.3.1.4. Spatial context is also important in classification of both natural vegetation with complex textural patterns and large agricultural fields with significant local variability within fields. Approaches to exploit spatial features at both the pixel level (e.g., co-occurrencebased texture and extended morphological attribute profiles [EMAPs]) and integration of segmentation approaches (e.g., HSeg) are discussed in this context in Section 3.3.2. Recently, classification methods that leverage nonparametric methods originating in the machine learning community have grown in popularity. An overview of both widely used and newly emerging approaches, including support vector machines (SVMs), Gaussian mixture models, and deep learning based on convolutional neural networks is provided in Section 3.4. Strategies to exploit unlabeled samples, including active learning and metric learning, which combine feature extraction and augmentation of the pool of training samples in an active learning framework, are outlined in Section 3.5. Integration of image segmentation with classification to accommodate spatial coherence typically observed in vegetation is also explored, including as an integrated active learning system. Exploitation of multisensor strategies for augmenting the pool of training samples is investigated via a transfer learning framework in Section 3.5.1.2. Finally, we look to the future, considering opportunities soon to be provided by new paradigms, as hyperspectral sensing is becoming common at multiple scales from ground-based and airborne autonomous vehicles to manned aircraft and space-based platforms

Dimensionality reduction using parallel ICA and its implementation on FPGA in hyperspectral image analysis

Hyperspectral images, although providing abundant information of the object, also bring high computational burden to data processing. This thesis studies the challenging problem of dimensionality reduction in Hyperspectral Image (HSI) analysis. Currently, there are two methods to reduce the dimension: band selection and feature extraction. This thesis presents a band selection technique based on Independent Component Analysis (ICA), an unsupervised signal separation algorithm. Given only the observations of hyperspectral images, the ICA –based band selection picks the independent bands which contain most of the spectral information of the original images. Due to the high volume of hyperspectral images, ICA -based band selection is a time consuming process. This thesis develops a parallel ICA algorithm which divides the decorrelation process into internal decorrelation and external decorrelation such that computation burden can be distributed from single processor to multiple processors, and the ICA process can be run in a parallel mode. Hardware implementation is always a faster and real -time solution to HSI analysis. Until now, there are few hardware designs for ICA -related processes. This thesis synthesizes the parallel ICA -based band selection on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), which is the best choice for moderate designs and fast implementations. Compared to other design syntheses, the synthesis present in this thesis develops three ICA re-configurable components for the purpose of reusability. In addition, this thesis demonstrates the relationship between the design and the capacity utilization of a single FPGA, then discusses the features of High Performance Reconfigurable Computing (HPRC) to accomodate large capacity and design requirements. Experiments are conducted on three data sets obtained from different sources. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed ICA -based band selection, parallel ICA and its synthesis on FPGA