Optimal Clustering Framework for Hyperspectral Band Selection

Band selection, by choosing a set of representative bands in hyperspectral image (HSI), is an effective method to reduce the redundant information without compromising the original contents. Recently, various unsupervised band selection methods have been proposed, but most of them are based on approximation algorithms which can only obtain suboptimal solutions toward a specific objective function. This paper focuses on clustering-based band selection, and proposes a new framework to solve the above dilemma, claiming the following contributions: 1) An optimal clustering framework (OCF), which can obtain the optimal clustering result for a particular form of objective function under a reasonable constraint. 2) A rank on clusters strategy (RCS), which provides an effective criterion to select bands on existing clustering structure. 3) An automatic method to determine the number of the required bands, which can better evaluate the distinctive information produced by certain number of bands. In experiments, the proposed algorithm is compared to some state-of-the-art competitors. According to the experimental results, the proposed algorithm is robust and significantly outperform the other methods on various data sets

A Novel Filter Approach for Band Selection and Classification of Hyperspectral Remotely Sensed Images Using Normalized Mutual Information and Support Vector Machines

Band selection is a great challenging task in the classification of hyperspectral remotely sensed images HSI. This is resulting from its high spectral resolution, the many class outputs and the limited number of training samples. For this purpose, this paper introduces a new filter approach for dimension reduction and classification of hyperspectral images using information theoretic (normalized mutual information) and support vector machines SVM. This method consists to select a minimal subset of the most informative and relevant bands from the input datasets for better classification efficiency. We applied our proposed algorithm on two well-known benchmark datasets gathered by the NASA's AVIRIS sensor over Indiana and Salinas valley in USA. The experimental results were assessed based on different evaluation metrics widely used in this area. The comparison with the state of the art methods proves that our method could produce good performance with reduced number of selected bands in a good timing. Keywords: Dimension reduction, Hyperspectral images, Band selection, Normalized mutual information, Classification, Support vector machinesComment: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-85056469155&partnerID=MN8TOAR

Spatial Prior Fuzziness Pool-Based Interactive Classification of Hyperspectral Images

Acquisition of labeled data for supervised Hyperspectral Image (HSI) classification is expensive in terms of both time and costs. Moreover, manual selection and labeling are often subjective and tend to induce redundancy into the classifier. Active learning (AL) can be a suitable approach for HSI classification as it integrates data acquisition to the classifier design by ranking the unlabeled data to provide advice for the next query that has the highest training utility. However, multiclass AL techniques tend to include redundant samples into the classifier to some extent. This paper addresses such a problem by introducing an AL pipeline which preserves the most representative and spatially heterogeneous samples. The adopted strategy for sample selection utilizes fuzziness to assess the mapping between actual output and the approximated a-posteriori probabilities, computed by a marginal probability distribution based on discriminative random fields. The samples selected in each iteration are then provided to the spectral angle mapper-based objective function to reduce the inter-class redundancy. Experiments on five HSI benchmark datasets confirmed that the proposed Fuzziness and Spectral Angle Mapper (FSAM)-AL pipeline presents competitive results compared to the state-of-the-art sample selection techniques, leading to lower computational requirements

MIMN-DPP: Maximum-information and minimum-noise determinantal point processes for unsupervised hyperspectral band selection

Band selection plays an important role in hyperspectral imaging for reducing the data and improving the efficiency of data acquisition and analysis whilst significantly lowering the cost of the imaging system. Without the category labels, it is challenging to select an effective and low-redundancy band subset. In this paper, a new unsupervised band selection algorithm is proposed based on a new band search criterion and an improved Determinantal Point Processes (DPP). First, to preserve the original information of hyperspectral image, a novel band search criterion is designed for searching the bands with high information entropy and low noise. Unfortunately, finding the optimal solution based on the search criteria to select a low-redundancy band subset is a NP-hard problem. To solve this problem, we consider the correlation of bands from both original hyperspectral image and its spatial information to construct a double-graph model to describe the relationship between spectral bands. Besides, an improved DPP algorithm is proposed for the approximate search of a low-redundancy band subset from the double-graph model. Experiment results on several well-known datasets show that the proposed optical band selection algorithm achieves better performance than many other state-of-the-art methods

Dimensionality reduction based on determinantal point process and singular spectrum analysis for hyperspectral images

Dimensionality reduction is of high importance in hyperspectral data processing, which can effectively reduce the data redundancy and computation time for improved classification accuracy. Band selection and feature extraction methods are two widely used dimensionality reduction techniques. By integrating the advantages of the band selection and feature extraction, the authors propose a new method for reducing the dimension of hyperspectral image data. First, a new and fast band selection algorithm is proposed for hyperspectral images based on an improved determinantal point process (DPP). To reduce the amount of calculation, the dual-DPP is used for fast sampling representative pixels, followed by k-nearest neighbour-based local processing to explore more spatial information. These representative pixel points are used to construct multiple adjacency matrices to describe the correlation between bands based on mutual information. To further improve the classification accuracy, two-dimensional singular spectrum analysis is used for feature extraction from the selected bands. Experiments show that the proposed method can select a low-redundancy and representative band subset, where both data dimension and computation time can be reduced. Furthermore, it also shows that the proposed dimensionality reduction algorithm outperforms a number of state-of-the-art methods in terms of classification accuracy

Feature extraction and classification for hyperspectral remote sensing images

Recent advances in sensor technology have led to an increased availability of hyperspectral remote sensing data at very high both spectral and spatial resolutions. Many techniques are developed to explore the spectral information and the spatial information of these data. In particular, feature extraction (FE) aimed at reducing the dimensionality of hyperspectral data while keeping as much spectral information as possible is one of methods to preserve the spectral information, while morphological profile analysis is the most popular methods used to explore the spatial information. Hyperspectral sensors collect information as a set of images represented by hundreds of spectral bands. While offering much richer spectral information than regular RGB and multispectral images, the high dimensional hyperspectal data creates also a challenge for traditional spectral data processing techniques. Conventional classification methods perform poorly on hyperspectral data due to the curse of dimensionality (i.e. the Hughes phenomenon: for a limited number of training samples, the classification accuracy decreases as the dimension increases). Classification techniques in pattern recognition typically assume that there are enough training samples available to obtain reasonably accurate class descriptions in quantitative form. However, the assumption that enough training samples are available to accurately estimate the class description is frequently not satisfied for hyperspectral remote sensing data classification, because the cost of collecting ground-truth of observed data can be considerably difficult and expensive. In contrast, techniques making accurate estimation by using only small training samples can save time and cost considerably. The small sample size problem therefore becomes a very important issue for hyperspectral image classification. Very high-resolution remotely sensed images from urban areas have recently become available. The classification of such images is challenging because urban areas often comprise a large number of different surface materials, and consequently the heterogeneity of urban images is relatively high. Moreover, different information classes can be made up of spectrally similar surface materials. Therefore, it is important to combine spectral and spatial information to improve the classification accuracy. In particular, morphological profile analysis is one of the most popular methods to explore the spatial information of the high resolution remote sensing data. When using morphological profiles (MPs) to explore the spatial information for the classification of hyperspectral data, one should consider three important issues. Firstly, classical morphological openings and closings degrade the object boundaries and deform the object shapes, while the morphological profile by reconstruction leads to some unexpected and undesirable results (e.g. over-reconstruction). Secondly, the generated MPs produce high-dimensional data, which may contain redundant information and create a new challenge for conventional classification methods, especially for the classifiers which are not robust to the Hughes phenomenon. Last but not least, linear features, which are used to construct MPs, lose too much spectral information when extracted from the original hyperspectral data. In order to overcome these problems and improve the classification results, we develop effective feature extraction algorithms and combine morphological features for the classification of hyperspectral remote sensing data. The contributions of this thesis are as follows. As the first contribution of this thesis, a novel semi-supervised local discriminant analysis (SELD) method is proposed for feature extraction in hyperspectral remote sensing imagery, with improved performance in both ill-posed and poor-posed conditions. The proposed method combines unsupervised methods (Local Linear Feature Extraction Methods (LLFE)) and supervised method (Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA)) in a novel framework without any free parameters. The underlying idea is to design an optimal projection matrix, which preserves the local neighborhood information inferred from unlabeled samples, while simultaneously maximizing the class discrimination of the data inferred from the labeled samples. Our second contribution is the application of morphological profiles with partial reconstruction to explore the spatial information in hyperspectral remote sensing data from the urban areas. Classical morphological openings and closings degrade the object boundaries and deform the object shapes. Morphological openings and closings by reconstruction can avoid this problem, but this process leads to some undesirable effects. Objects expected to disappear at a certain scale remain present when using morphological openings and closings by reconstruction, which means that object size is often incorrectly represented. Morphological profiles with partial reconstruction improve upon both classical MPs and MPs with reconstruction. The shapes of objects are better preserved than classical MPs and the size information is preserved better than in reconstruction MPs. A novel semi-supervised feature extraction framework for dimension reduction of generated morphological profiles is the third contribution of this thesis. The morphological profiles (MPs) with different structuring elements and a range of increasing sizes of morphological operators produce high-dimensional data. These high-dimensional data may contain redundant information and create a new challenge for conventional classification methods, especially for the classifiers which are not robust to the Hughes phenomenon. To the best of our knowledge the use of semi-supervised feature extraction methods for the generated morphological profiles has not been investigated yet. The proposed generalized semi-supervised local discriminant analysis (GSELD) is an extension of SELD with a data-driven parameter. In our fourth contribution, we propose a fast iterative kernel principal component analysis (FIKPCA) to extract features from hyperspectral images. In many applications, linear FE methods, which depend on linear projection, can result in loss of nonlinear properties of the original data after reduction of dimensionality. Traditional nonlinear methods will cause some problems on storage resources and computational load. The proposed method is a kernel version of the Candid Covariance-Free Incremental Principal Component Analysis, which estimates the eigenvectors through iteration. Without performing eigen decomposition on the Gram matrix, our approach can reduce the space complexity and time complexity greatly. Our last contribution constructs MPs with partial reconstruction on nonlinear features. Traditional linear features, on which the morphological profiles usually are built, lose too much spectral information. Nonlinear features are more suitable to describe higher order complex and nonlinear distributions. In particular, kernel principal components are among the nonlinear features we used to built MPs with partial reconstruction, which led to significant improvement in terms of classification accuracies. The experimental analysis performed with the novel techniques developed in this thesis demonstrates an improvement in terms of accuracies in different fields of application when compared to other state of the art methods

Multi-Classifiers And Decision Fusion For Robust Statistical Pattern Recognition With Applications To Hyperspectral Classification

In this dissertation, a multi-classifier, decision fusion framework is proposed for robust classification of high dimensional data in small-sample-size conditions. Such datasets present two key challenges. (1) The high dimensional feature spaces compromise the classifiers’ generalization ability in that the classifier tends to overit decision boundaries to the training data. This phenomenon is commonly known as the Hughes phenomenon in the pattern classification community. (2) The small-sample-size of the training data results in ill-conditioned estimates of its statistics. Most classifiers rely on accurate estimation of these statistics for modeling training data and labeling test data, and hence ill-conditioned statistical estimates result in poorer classification performance. This dissertation tests the efficacy of the proposed algorithms to classify primarily remotely sensed hyperspectral data and secondarily diagnostic digital mammograms, since these applications naturally result in very high dimensional feature spaces and often do not have sufficiently large training datasets to support the dimensionality of the feature space. Conventional approaches, such as Stepwise LDA (S-LDA) are sub-optimal, in that they utilize a small subset of the rich spectral information provided by hyperspectral data for classification. In contrast, the approach proposed in this dissertation utilizes the entire high dimensional feature space for classification by identifying a suitable partition of this space, employing a bank-of-classifiers to perform “local” classification over this partition, and then merging these local decisions using an appropriate decision fusion mechanism. Adaptive classifier weight assignment and nonlinear pre-processing (in kernel induced spaces) are also proposed within this framework to improve its robustness over a wide range of fidelity conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework results in significant improvements in classification accuracies (as high as a 12% increase) over conventional approaches

Multi-Classifiers And Decision Fusion For Robust Statistical Pattern Recognition With Applications To Hyperspectral Classification

In this dissertation, a multi-classifier, decision fusion framework is proposed for robust classification of high dimensional data in small-sample-size conditions. Such datasets present two key challenges. (1) The high dimensional feature spaces compromise the classifiers’ generalization ability in that the classifier tends to overit decision boundaries to the training data. This phenomenon is commonly known as the Hughes phenomenon in the pattern classification community. (2) The small-sample-size of the training data results in ill-conditioned estimates of its statistics. Most classifiers rely on accurate estimation of these statistics for modeling training data and labeling test data, and hence ill-conditioned statistical estimates result in poorer classification performance. This dissertation tests the efficacy of the proposed algorithms to classify primarily remotely sensed hyperspectral data and secondarily diagnostic digital mammograms, since these applications naturally result in very high dimensional feature spaces and often do not have sufficiently large training datasets to support the dimensionality of the feature space. Conventional approaches, such as Stepwise LDA (S-LDA) are sub-optimal, in that they utilize a small subset of the rich spectral information provided by hyperspectral data for classification. In contrast, the approach proposed in this dissertation utilizes the entire high dimensional feature space for classification by identifying a suitable partition of this space, employing a bank-of-classifiers to perform “local” classification over this partition, and then merging these local decisions using an appropriate decision fusion mechanism. Adaptive classifier weight assignment and nonlinear pre-processing (in kernel induced spaces) are also proposed within this framework to improve its robustness over a wide range of fidelity conditions. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework results in significant improvements in classification accuracies (as high as a 12% increase) over conventional approaches

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