Patent ID: 7321691
Filing Date: 2008-01-22
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
1. A computer readable medium encoded with a computer program for aiding a user in the selection of a candidate spectral endmember for a scene composed of multiple pixels comprising: receiving scene reflectance data comprised of multiple unknown spectra; receiving reference spectral data comprised of multiple known spectra; comparing each unknown spectra to the known spectra, each being represented as a vector in n-dimension space, by measuring the angle of separation between the each unknown spectra vector and each known spectra vector; selecting unknown spectra with smallest measured angles of vector separation from known spectra as candidate spectral endmembers; unmixing each of the multiple pixels to determine percentage contribution of each of the candidate spectral endmembers to each of the multiple pixels; applying a shade mask to the unmixed pixels, resulting in X number of pixels which have less than a threshold amount of shade determined by the shade mask; generating a root mean square (RMS) error image utilizing the X number of pixels; setting an RMS minimum and maximum range, wherein pixels falling with the range represent candidate spectral endmembers; and comparing the X number of pixels to the range to determine candidate spectral endmembers; and selecting a candidate spectral endmember.