Spectral-spatial classification of n-dimensional images in real-time based on segmentation and mathematical morphology on GPUs

The objective of this thesis is to develop efficient schemes for spectral-spatial n-dimensional image classification. By efficient schemes, we mean schemes that produce good classification results in terms of accuracy, as well as schemes that can be executed in real-time on low-cost computing infrastructures, such as the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) shipped in personal computers. The n-dimensional images include images with two and three dimensions, such as images coming from the medical domain, and also images ranging from ten to hundreds of dimensions, such as the multiand hyperspectral images acquired in remote sensing. In image analysis, classification is a regularly used method for information retrieval in areas such as medical diagnosis, surveillance, manufacturing and remote sensing, among others. In addition, as the hyperspectral images have been widely available in recent years owing to the reduction in the size and cost of the sensors, the number of applications at lab scale, such as food quality control, art forgery detection, disease diagnosis and forensics has also increased. Although there are many spectral-spatial classification schemes, most are computationally inefficient in terms of execution time. In addition, the need for efficient computation on low-cost computing infrastructures is increasing in line with the incorporation of technology into everyday applications. In this thesis we have proposed two spectral-spatial classification schemes: one based on segmentation and other based on wavelets and mathematical morphology. These schemes were designed with the aim of producing good classification results and they perform better than other schemes found in the literature based on segmentation and mathematical morphology in terms of accuracy. Additionally, it was necessary to develop techniques and strategies for efficient GPU computing, for example, a block–asynchronous strategy, resulting in an efficient implementation on GPU of the aforementioned spectral-spatial classification schemes. The optimal GPU parameters were analyzed and different data partitioning and thread block arrangements were studied to exploit the GPU resources. The results show that the GPU is an adequate computing platform for on-board processing of hyperspectral information

GPU computation of Attribute Profiles for Remote Sensing Image Classification

Classification of multi and hyperspectral remote sensing images is a common task. It usually requires a previous step consisting of a technique for extracting the spatial information from the image, being profiles a common approach. In particular, attribute profiles are based on the application of a morphological filter to the connected components of the image producing rel-evant spatial information at different levels of detail. The information is built based on attributes such as area or standard deviation. Their high computa-tional cost makes the attribute profiles good candidates for their execution on commodity GPUs. In this paper, the first parallel implementation of attribute profiles over multispectral images in CUDA for Nvidia GPUs is proposed. The GPU proposal is based on the construction of a max-tree that is traversed from the leaves to the root by merging the connected components of the tree obtaining a considerable reduction in execution time over the CPU execution

Wavelet-Based Multicomponent Denoising Profile for the Classification of Hyperspectral Images

The high resolution of the hyperspectral remote sensing images available allows the detailed analysis of even small spatial structures. As a consequence, the study of techniques to efficiently extract spatial information is a very active realm. In this paper, we propose a novel denoising wavelet-based profile for the extraction of spatial information that does not require parameters fixed by the user. Over each band obtained by a wavelet-based feature extraction technique, a denoising profile (DP) is built through the recursive application of discrete wavelet transforms followed by a thresholding process. Each component of the DP consists of features reconstructed by recursively applying inverse wavelet transforms to the thresholded coefficients. Several thresholding methods are explored. In order to show the effectiveness of the extended DP (EDP), we propose a classification scheme based on the computation of the EDP and supervised classification by extreme learning machine. The obtained results are compared to other state-of-the-art methods based on profiles in the literature. An additional study of behavior in the presence of added noise is also performed showing the high reliability of the EDP proposedThis work was supported in part by the Consellería de Educación, Universidade e Formación Profesional under Grants GRC2014/008 and ED431C 2018/2019 and the Ministerio de Economía y Empresa, Gobierno de España under Grant TIN2016-76373-P. Both are cofunded by the European Regional Development FundS

Watershed Monitoring in Galicia from UAV Multispectral Imagery Using Advanced Texture Methods

Watershed management is the study of the relevant characteristics of a watershed aimed at the use and sustainable management of forests, land, and water. Watersheds can be threatened by deforestation, uncontrolled logging, changes in farming systems, overgrazing, road and track construction, pollution, and invasion of exotic plants. This article describes a procedure to automatically monitor the river basins of Galicia, Spain, using five-band multispectral images taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle and several image processing algorithms. The objective is to determine the state of the vegetation, especially the identification of areas occupied by invasive species, as well as the detection of man-made structures that occupy the river basin using multispectral images. Since the territory to be studied occupies extensive areas and the resulting images are large, techniques and algorithms have been selected for fast execution and efficient use of computational resources. These techniques include superpixel segmentation and the use of advanced texture methods. For each one of the stages of the method (segmentation, texture codebook generation, feature extraction, and classification), different algorithms have been evaluated in terms of speed and accuracy for the identification of vegetation and natural and artificial structures in the Galician riversides. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can achieve this goal with speed and precisionThis work was supported in part by the Civil Program UAVs Initiative, promoted by the Xunta de Galicia and developed in partnership with the Babcock company to promote the use of unmanned technologies in civil services. We also have to acknowledge the support by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Government of Spain (grant number PID2019-104834GB-I00), and Consellería de Educación, Universidade e Formación Profesional (grant number ED431C 2018/19, and accreditation 2019–2022 ED431G-2019/04). All are co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)S

Watershed Monitoring in Galicia from UAV Multispectral Imagery Using Advanced Texture Methods

Watershed management is the study of the relevant characteristics of a watershed aimed at the use and sustainable management of forests, land, and water. Watersheds can be threatened by deforestation, uncontrolled logging, changes in farming systems, overgrazing, road and track construction, pollution, and invasion of exotic plants. This article describes a procedure to automatically monitor the river basins of Galicia, Spain, using five-band multispectral images taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle and several image processing algorithms. The objective is to determine the state of the vegetation, especially the identification of areas occupied by invasive species, as well as the detection of man-made structures that occupy the river basin using multispectral images. Since the territory to be studied occupies extensive areas and the resulting images are large, techniques and algorithms have been selected for fast execution and efficient use of computational resources. These techniques include superpixel segmentation and the use of advanced texture methods. For each one of the stages of the method (segmentation, texture codebook generation, feature extraction, and classification), different algorithms have been evaluated in terms of speed and accuracy for the identification of vegetation and natural and artificial structures in the Galician riversides. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can achieve this goal with speed and precision