Hyper-spectral data can be analyzed to recover physical properties at large
planetary scales. This involves resolving inverse problems which can be
addressed within machine learning, with the advantage that, once a relationship
between physical parameters and spectra has been established in a data-driven
fashion, the learned relationship can be used to estimate physical parameters
for new hyper-spectral observations. Within this framework, we propose a
spatially-constrained and partially-latent regression method which maps
high-dimensional inputs (hyper-spectral images) onto low-dimensional responses
(physical parameters such as the local chemical composition of the soil). The
proposed regression model comprises two key features. Firstly, it combines a
Gaussian mixture of locally-linear mappings (GLLiM) with a partially-latent
response model. While the former makes high-dimensional regression tractable,
the latter enables to deal with physical parameters that cannot be observed or,
more generally, with data contaminated by experimental artifacts that cannot be
explained with noise models. Secondly, spatial constraints are introduced in
the model through a Markov random field (MRF) prior which provides a spatial
structure to the Gaussian-mixture hidden variables. Experiments conducted on a
database composed of remotely sensed observations collected from the Mars
planet by the Mars Express orbiter demonstrate the effectiveness of the
proposed model.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 3 table