Sequential Spectral Change Vector Analysis for Iteratively Discovering and Detecting Multiple Changes in Hyperspectral Images

• Published in: IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing Vol. 53; no. 8; pp. 4363 - 4378
• Main Authors: Sicong Liu, Bruzzone, Lorenzo, Bovolo, Francesca, Zanetti, Massimo, Peijun Du
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2015; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Change detection (CD); change representation; change vector analysis (CVA); change visualization; Eigenvalues and eigenfunctions; hyperspectral images; Hyperspectral imaging; Image detection; Interactive; Manuals; Mathematical analysis; multiple changes; multitemporal images; remote sensing; Representations; Spectra; Vector analysis; Vectors; Vectors (mathematics); Change detection (CD); change visualization; multitemporal images; change vector analysis (CVA); multiple changes; remote sensing; change representation; hyperspectral images
• ISSN: 0196-2892; 1558-0644
• DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2015.2396686

This paper presents an effective semiautomatic method for discovering and detecting multiple changes (i.e., different kinds of changes) in multitemporal hyperspectral (HS) images. Differently from the state-of-the-art techniques, the proposed method is designed to be sensitive to the small spectral variations that can be identified in HS images but usually are not detectable in multispectral images. The method is based on the proposed sequential spectral change vector analysis, which exploits an iterative hierarchical scheme that at each iteration discovers and identifies a subset of changes. The approach is interactive and semiautomatic and allows one to study in detail the structure of changes hidden in the variations of the spectral signatures according to a top-down procedure. A novel 2-D adaptive spectral change vector representation (ASCVR) is proposed to visualize the changes. At each level this representation is optimized by an automatic definition of a reference vector that emphasizes the discrimination of changes. Finally, an interactive manual change identification is applied for extracting changes in the ASCVR domain. The proposed approach has been tested on three hyperspectral data sets, including both simulated and real multitemporal images showing multiple-change detection problems. Experimental results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.