bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A METHOD TO ESTIMATE TEMPORAL INTERACTION IN A CONDITIONAL RANDOM FIELD BASED APPROACH FOR CROP RECOGNITION
Authors: Diaz P. M. A. , Feitosa R. Q. , Sanches I. D. , Costa G. A. O. P.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. This paper presents a method to estimate the temporal interaction in a Conditional Random Field (CRF) based approach for crop recognition from multitemporal remote sensing image sequences. This approach models the phenology of different crop types as a CRF. Interaction potentials are assumed to depend only on the class labels of an image site at two consecutive epochs. In the proposed method, the estimation of temporal interaction parameters is considered as an optimization problem, whose goal is to find the transition matrix that maximizes the CRF performance, upon a set of labelled data. The objective functions underlying the optimization procedure can be formulated in terms of different accuracy metrics, such as overall and average class accuracy per crop or phenological stages. To validate the proposed approach, experiments were carried out upon a dataset consisting of 12 co-registered LANDSAT images of a region in southeast of Brazil. Pattern Search was used as the optimization algorithm. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method was able to substantially outperform estimates related to joint or conditional class transition probabilities, which rely on training samples.
GLOBAL LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION USING MODIS SURFACE REFLECTANCE PROSUCTS
Authors: Fukue Kiyonari , Shimoda Haruhisa
Published: June 2016

Abstract. The objective of this study is to develop high accuracy land cover classification algorithm for Global scale by using multi-temporal MODIS land reflectance products. In this study, time-domain co-occurrence matrix was introduced as a classification feature which provides time-series signature of land covers. Further, the non-parametric minimum distance classifier was introduced for timedomain co-occurrence matrix, which performs multi-dimensional pattern matching for time-domain co-occurrence matrices of a classification target pixel and each classification classes. The global land cover classification experiments have been conducted by applying the proposed classification method using 46 multi-temporal(in one year) SR(Surface Reflectance) and NBAR(Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance) products, respectively. IGBP 17 land cover categories were used in our classification experiments. As the results, SR and NBAR products showed similar classification accuracy of 99%.
ANALYZING SPECTRAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SHADOW AREA FROM ADS-40 HIGH RADIOMETRIC RESOLUTION AERIAL IMAGES
Authors: Hsieh Yi-Ta , Wu Shou-Tsung , Chen Chaur-Tzuhn , Chen Jan-Chang
Published: June 2016

Abstract. The shadows in optical remote sensing images are regarded as image nuisances in numerous applications. The classification and interpretation of shadow area in a remote sensing image are a challenge, because of the reduction or total loss of spectral information in those areas. In recent years, airborne multispectral aerial image devices have been developed 12-bit or higher radiometric resolution data, including Leica ADS-40, Intergraph DMC. The increased radiometric resolution of digital imagery provides more radiometric details of potential use in classification or interpretation of land cover of shadow areas. Therefore, the objectives of this study are to analyze the spectral properties of the land cover in the shadow areas by ADS-40 high radiometric resolution aerial images, and to investigate the spectral and vegetation index differences between the various shadow and non-shadow land covers. According to research findings of spectral analysis of ADS-40 image: (i) The DN values in shadow area are much lower than in nonshadow area; (ii) DN values received from shadowed areas that will also be affected by different land cover, and it shows the possibility of land cover property retrieval as in nonshadow area; (iii) The DN values received from shadowed regions decrease in the visible band from short to long wavelengths due to scattering; (iv) The shadow area NIR of vegetation category also shows a strong reflection; (v) Generally, vegetation indexes (NDVI) still have utility to classify the vegetation and non-vegetation in shadow area. The spectral data of high radiometric resolution images (ADS-40) is potential for the extract land cover information of shadow areas.
APPLICABILITY EVALUATION OF OBJECT DETECTION METHOD TO SATELLITE AND AERIAL IMAGERIES
Authors: Kamiya K. , Fuse T. , Takahashi M.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Since satellite and aerial imageries are recently widely spread and frequently observed, combination of them are expected to complement spatial and temporal resolution each other. One of the prospective applications is traffic monitoring, where objects of interest, or vehicles, need to be recognized automatically. Techniques that employ object detection before object recognition can save a computational time and cost, and thus take a significant role. However, there is not enough knowledge whether object detection method can perform well on satellite and aerial imageries. In addition, it also has to be studied how characteristics of satellite and aerial imageries affect the object detection performance. This study employ binarized normed gradients (BING) method that runs significantly fast and is robust to rotation and noise. For our experiments, 11-bits BGR-IR satellite imageries from WorldView-3, and BGR-color aerial imageries are used respectively, and we create thousands of ground truth samples. We conducted several experiments to compare the performances with different images, to verify whether combination of different resolution images improved the performance, and to analyze the applicability of mixing satellite and aerial imageries. The results showed that infrared band had little effect on the detection rate, that 11-bit images performed less than 8-bit images and that the better spatial resolution brought the better performance. Another result might imply that mixing higher and lower resolution images for training dataset could help detection performance. Furthermore, we found that aerial images improved the detection performance on satellite images.
EFFECT OF PANSHARPENED IMAGE ON SOME OF PIXEL BASED AND OBJECT BASED CLASSIFICATION ACCURACY
Authors: Karakus P. , Karabork H.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Classification is the most important method to determine type of crop contained in a region for agricultural planning. There are two types of the classification. First is pixel based and the other is object based classification method. While pixel based classification methods are based on the information in each pixel, object based classification method is based on objects or image objects that formed by the combination of information from a set of similar pixels. Multispectral image contains a higher degree of spectral resolution than a panchromatic image. Panchromatic image have a higher spatial resolution than a multispectral image. Pan sharpening is a process of merging high spatial resolution panchromatic and high spectral resolution multispectral imagery to create a single high resolution color image. The aim of the study was to compare the potential classification accuracy provided by pan sharpened image. In this study, SPOT 5 image was used dated April 2013. 5m panchromatic image and 10m multispectral image are pan sharpened. Four different classification methods were investigated: maximum likelihood, decision tree, support vector machine at the pixel level and object based classification methods. SPOT 5 pan sharpened image was used to classification sun flowers and corn in a study site located at Kadirli region on Osmaniye in Turkey. The effects of pan sharpened image on classification results were also examined. Accuracy assessment showed that the object based classification resulted in the better overall accuracy values than the others. The results that indicate that these classification methods can be used for identifying sun flower and corn and estimating crop areas.
A REGION-BASED MULTI-SCALE APPROACH FOR OBJECT-BASED IMAGE ANALYSIS
Authors: Kavzoglu T. , Yildiz Erdemir M. , Tonbul H.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Within the last two decades, object-based image analysis (OBIA) considering objects (i.e. groups of pixels) instead of pixels has gained popularity and attracted increasing interest. The most important stage of the OBIA is image segmentation that groups spectrally similar adjacent pixels considering not only the spectral features but also spatial and textural features. Although there are several parameters (scale, shape, compactness and band weights) to be set by the analyst, scale parameter stands out the most important parameter in segmentation process. Estimating optimal scale parameter is crucially important to increase the classification accuracy that depends on image resolution, image object size and characteristics of the study area. In this study, two scale-selection strategies were implemented in the image segmentation process using pan-sharped Qickbird-2 image. The first strategy estimates optimal scale parameters for the eight sub-regions. For this purpose, the local variance/rate of change (LV-RoC) graphs produced by the ESP-2 tool were analysed to determine fine, moderate and coarse scales for each region. In the second strategy, the image was segmented using the three candidate scale values (fine, moderate, coarse) determined from the LV-RoC graph calculated for whole image. The nearest neighbour classifier was applied in all segmentation experiments and equal number of pixels was randomly selected to calculate accuracy metrics (overall accuracy and kappa coefficient). Comparison of region-based and image-based segmentation was carried out on the classified images and found that region-based multi-scale OBIA produced significantly more accurate results than image-based single-scale OBIA. The difference in classification accuracy reached to 10% in terms of overall accuracy.
REGION OF INTEREST DETECTION BASED ON HISTOGRAM SEGMENTATION FOR SATELLITE IMAGE
Authors: Kiadtikornthaweeyot Warinthorn , Tatnall Adrian R. L.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. High resolution satellite imaging is considered as the outstanding applicant to extract the Earth’s surface information. Extraction of a feature of an image is very difficult due to having to find the appropriate image segmentation techniques and combine different methods to detect the Region of Interest (ROI) most effectively. This paper proposes techniques to classify objects in the satellite image by using image processing methods on high-resolution satellite images. The systems to identify the ROI focus on forests, urban and agriculture areas. The proposed system is based on histograms of the image to classify objects using thresholding. The thresholding is performed by considering the behaviour of the histogram mapping to a particular region in the satellite image. The proposed model is based on histogram segmentation and morphology techniques. There are five main steps supporting each other; Histogram classification, Histogram segmentation, Morphological dilation, Morphological fill image area and holes and ROI management. The methods to detect the ROI of the satellite images based on histogram classification have been studied, implemented and tested. The algorithm is be able to detect the area of forests, urban and agriculture separately. The image segmentation methods can detect the ROI and reduce the size of the original image by discarding the unnecessary parts.
PARALLEL IMPLEMENTATION OF MORPHOLOGICAL PROFILE BASED SPECTRAL-SPATIAL CLASSIFICATION SCHEME FOR HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGERY
Authors: Kumar B. , Dikshit O.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Extended morphological profile (EMP) is a good technique for extracting spectral-spatial information from the images but large size of hyperspectral images is an important concern for creating EMPs. However, with the availability of modern multi-core processors and commodity parallel processing systems like graphics processing units (GPUs) at desktop level, parallel computing provides a viable option to significantly accelerate execution of such computations. In this paper, parallel implementation of an EMP based spectralspatial classification method for hyperspectral imagery is presented. The parallel implementation is done both on multi-core CPU and GPU. The impact of parallelization on speed up and classification accuracy is analyzed. For GPU, the implementation is done in compute unified device architecture (CUDA) C. The experiments are carried out on two well-known hyperspectral images. It is observed from the experimental results that GPU implementation provides a speed up of about 7 times, while parallel implementation on multi-core CPU resulted in speed up of about 3 times. It is also observed that parallel implementation has no adverse impact on the classification accuracy.
COMPARISON OF FILTERS DEDICATED TO SPECKLE SUPPRESSION IN SAR IMAGES
Authors: Kupidura P.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. This paper presents the results of research on the effectiveness of different filtering methods dedicated to speckle suppression in SAR images. The tests were performed on RadarSat-2 images and on an artificial image treated with simulated speckle noise. The research analysed the performance of particular filters related to the effectiveness of speckle suppression and to the ability to preserve image details and edges. Speckle is a phenomenon inherent to radar images – a deterministic noise connected with land cover type, but also causing significant changes in digital numbers of pixels. As a result, it may affect interpretation, classification and other processes concerning radar images. Speckle, resembling “salt and pepper” noise, has the form of a set of relatively small groups of pixels of values markedly different from values of other pixels representing the same type of land cover. Suppression of this noise may also cause suppression of small image details, therefore the ability to preserve the important parts of an image, was analysed as well. In the present study, selected filters were tested, and methods dedicated particularly to speckle noise suppression: Frost, Gamma-MAP, Lee, Lee-Sigma, Local Region, general filtering methods which might be effective in this respect: Mean, Median, in addition to morphological filters (alternate sequential filters with multiple structuring element and by reconstruction). The analysis presented in this paper compared the effectiveness of different filtering methods. It proved that some of the dedicated radar filters are efficient tools for speckle suppression, but also demonstrated a significant efficiency of the morphological approach, especially its ability to preserve image details.
AUTOMATIC APPROACH TO VHR SATELLITE IMAGE CLASSIFICATION
Authors: Kupidura P. , Osińska-Skotak K. , Pluto-Kossakowska J.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. In this paper, we present a proposition of a fully automatic classification of VHR satellite images. Unlike the most widespread approaches: supervised classification, which requires prior defining of class signatures, or unsupervised classification, which must be followed by an interpretation of its results, the proposed method requires no human intervention except for the setting of the initial parameters. The presented approach bases on both spectral and textural analysis of the image and consists of 3 steps. The first step, the analysis of spectral data, relies on NDVI values. Its purpose is to distinguish between basic classes, such as water, vegetation and non-vegetation, which all differ significantly spectrally, thus they can be easily extracted basing on spectral analysis. The second step relies on granulometric maps. These are the product of local granulometric analysis of an image and present information on the texture of each pixel neighbourhood, depending on the texture grain. The purpose of texture analysis is to distinguish between different classes, spectrally similar, but yet of different texture, e.g. bare soil from a built-up area, or low vegetation from a wooded area. Due to the use of granulometric analysis, based on mathematical morphology opening and closing, the results are resistant to the border effect (qualifying borders of objects in an image as spaces of high texture), which affect other methods of texture analysis like GLCM statistics or fractal analysis. Therefore, the effectiveness of the analysis is relatively high. Several indices based on values of different granulometric maps have been developed to simplify the extraction of classes of different texture. The third and final step of the process relies on a vegetation index, based on near infrared and blue bands. Its purpose is to correct partially misclassified pixels. All the indices used in the classification model developed relate to reflectance values, so the preliminary step of recalculation of pixel DNs to reflectance is required. Thanks to this, the proposed approach is in theory universal, and might be applied to different satellite system images of different acquisition dates. The test data consists of 3 Pleiades images captured on different dates. Research allowed to determine optimal indices values. Using the same parameters, we obtained a very good accuracy of extraction of 5 land cover/use classes: water, low vegetation, bare soil, wooded area and built-up area in all the test images (kappa from 87% to 96%). What constitutes important, even significant changes in parameter values, did not cause a significant declination of classification accuracy, which demonstrates how robust the proposed method is.
CLOUD DETECTION OF OPTICAL SATELLITE IMAGES USING SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE
Authors: Lee Kuan-Yi , Lin Chao-Hung
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Cloud covers are generally present in optical remote-sensing images, which limit the usage of acquired images and increase the difficulty of data analysis, such as image compositing, correction of atmosphere effects, calculations of vegetation induces, land cover classification, and land cover change detection. In previous studies, thresholding is a common and useful method in cloud detection. However, a selected threshold is usually suitable for certain cases or local study areas, and it may be failed in other cases. In other words, thresholding-based methods are data-sensitive. Besides, there are many exceptions to control, and the environment is changed dynamically. Using the same threshold value on various data is not effective. In this study, a threshold-free method based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) is proposed, which can avoid the abovementioned problems. A statistical model is adopted to detect clouds instead of a subjective thresholding-based method, which is the main idea of this study. The features used in a classifier is the key to a successful classification. As a result, Automatic Cloud Cover Assessment (ACCA) algorithm, which is based on physical characteristics of clouds, is used to distinguish the clouds and other objects. In the same way, the algorithm called Fmask (Zhu et al., 2012) uses a lot of thresholds and criteria to screen clouds, cloud shadows, and snow. Therefore, the algorithm of feature extraction is based on the ACCA algorithm and Fmask. Spatial and temporal information are also important for satellite images. Consequently, co-occurrence matrix and temporal variance with uniformity of the major principal axis are used in proposed method. We aim to classify images into three groups: cloud, non-cloud and the others. In experiments, images acquired by the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and images containing the landscapes of agriculture, snow area, and island are tested. Experiment results demonstrate the detection accuracy of the proposed method is better than related methods.
MULTIPLE REFLECTION EFFECTS IN NONLINEAR MIXTURE MODEL FOR HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGE ANALYSIS
Authors: Liu C. Y. , Ren H.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Hyperspectral spectrometers can record electromagnetic energy with hundreds or thousands of spectral channels. With such high spectral resolution, the spectral information has better capability for material identification. Because of the spatial resolution, one pixel in hyperspectral images usually covers several meters, and it may contain more than one material. Therefore, the mixture model must be considered. Linear mixture model (LMM) has been widely used for remote sensing target classifications, because of its simplicity and yields reasonable results for smooth surfaces. For rough surfaces, the physical interactions of the light scattered between multiple materials in the scene must be considered. Recently, Generalized Bilinear Model (GBM) is proposed and it includes the double reflection between different materials into a nonlinear model, but it ignores the interactions within the same material. In this study, we propose a modified version of GBM to further consider this effect in our model, called Modified Generalized Bilinear Model (MGBM).
AUTOMATIC SEA BIRD DETECTION FROM HIGH RESOLUTION AERIAL IMAGERY
Authors: Mader S. , Grenzdörffer G. J.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Great efforts are presently taken in the scientific community to develop computerized and (fully) automated image processing methods allowing for an efficient and automatic monitoring of sea birds and marine mammals in ever-growing amounts of aerial imagery. Currently the major part of the processing, however, is still conducted by especially trained professionals, visually examining the images and detecting and classifying the requested subjects. This is a very tedious task, particularly when the rate of void images regularly exceeds the mark of 90%. In the content of this contribution we will present our work aiming to support the processing of aerial images by modern methods from the field of image processing. We will especially focus on the combination of local, region-based feature detection and piecewise global image segmentation for automatic detection of different sea bird species. Large image dimensions resulting from the use of medium and large-format digital cameras in aerial surveys inhibit the applicability of image processing methods based on global operations. In order to efficiently handle those image sizes and to nevertheless take advantage of globally operating segmentation algorithms, we will describe the combined usage of a simple performant feature detector based on local operations on the original image with a complex global segmentation algorithm operating on extracted sub-images. The resulting exact segmentation of possible candidates then serves as a basis for the determination of feature vectors for subsequent elimination of false candidates and for classification tasks.
UNSUPERVISED WISHART CLASSFICATION OF WETLANDS IN NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA USING POLSAR DATA BASED ON FISHER LINEAR DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS
Authors: Mohammadimanesh F. , Salehi B. , Mahdianpari M. , Homayouni S.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) imagery is a complex multi-dimensional dataset, which is an important source of information for various natural resources and environmental classification and monitoring applications. PolSAR imagery produces valuable information by observing scattering mechanisms from different natural and man-made objects. Land cover mapping using PolSAR data classification is one of the most important applications of SAR remote sensing earth observations, which have gained increasing attention in the recent years. However, one of the most challenging aspects of classification is selecting features with maximum discrimination capability. To address this challenge, a statistical approach based on the Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis (FLDA) and the incorporation of physical interpretation of PolSAR data into classification is proposed in this paper. After pre-processing of PolSAR data, including the speckle reduction, the H/α classification is used in order to classify the basic scattering mechanisms. Then, a new method for feature weighting, based on the fusion of FLDA and physical interpretation, is implemented. This method proves to increase the classification accuracy as well as increasing between-class discrimination in the final Wishart classification. The proposed method was applied to a full polarimetric C-band RADARSAT-2 data set from Avalon area, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. This imagery has been acquired in June 2015, and covers various types of wetlands including bogs, fens, marshes and shallow water. The results were compared with the standard Wishart classification, and an improvement of about 20% was achieved in the overall accuracy. This method provides an opportunity for operational wetland classification in northern latitude with high accuracy using only SAR polarimetric data.
LAND USE CLASSIFICATION FROM VHR AERIAL IMAGES USING INVARIANT COLOUR COMPONENTS AND TEXTURE
Authors: Movia A. , Beinat A. , Sandri T.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Very high resolution (VHR) aerial images can provide detailed analysis about landscape and environment; nowadays, thanks to the rapid growing airborne data acquisition technology an increasing number of high resolution datasets are freely available. In a VHR image the essential information is contained in the red-green-blue colour components (RGB) and in the texture, therefore a preliminary step in image analysis concerns the classification in order to detect pixels having similar characteristics and to group them in distinct classes. Common land use classification approaches use colour at a first stage, followed by texture analysis, particularly for the evaluation of landscape patterns. Unfortunately RGB-based classifications are significantly influenced by image setting, as contrast, saturation, and brightness, and by the presence of shadows in the scene. The classification methods analysed in this work aim to mitigate these effects. The procedures developed considered the use of invariant colour components, image resampling, and the evaluation of a RGB texture parameter for various increasing sizes of a structuring element. To identify the most efficient solution, the classification vectors obtained were then processed by a K-means unsupervised classifier using different metrics, and the results were compared with respect to corresponding user supervised classifications. The experiments performed and discussed in the paper let us evaluate the effective contribution of texture information, and compare the most suitable vector components and metrics for automatic classification of very high resolution RGB aerial images.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HIMAWARI-8-DERIVED OVERSHOOTING TOPS AND EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Authors: Park H. M. , Kim M. A. , Im J.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Severe weathers such as heavy rainfall, floods, strong wind, and lightning are closely related with the strong convection activities of atmosphere. Overshooting tops sometimes occur by deep convection above tropopause, penetrating into the lower stratosphere. Due to its high potential energy, the detection of OT is crucial to understand the climatic phenomena. Satellite images are useful to detect the dynamics of atmospheric conditions using cloud observation. This study used machine learning methods for extracting OTs. The reference cases were built using CloudSat, CALIPSO, and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data with Himawari-8 imagery. As reference cases, 11 OT events were detected. The aim of this study is the investigation of relationship between OTs cases and the occurrences of heavy rainfall. For investigation of OT effects, TRMM daily rain rate data (mm/hr) were collected and averaged at 25 km intervals until 250km from the center of OT cases. As the result, precipitation rate clearly coincides with the distance from the center of OT occurrence.
ESTIMATING WOOD VOLUME FOR PINUS BRUTIA TREES IN FOREST STANDS FROM QUICKBIRD-2 IMAGERY
Authors: Patias Petros , Stournara Panagiota
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Knowledge of forest parameters, such as wood volume, is required for a sustainable forest management. Collecting such information in the field is laborious and even not feasible in inaccessible areas. In this study, tree wood volume is estimated utilizing remote sensing techniques, which can facilitate the extraction of relevant information. The study area is the University Forest of Taxiarchis, which is located in central Chalkidiki, Northern Greece and covers an area of 58km2. The tree species under study is the conifer evergreen species P. brutia (Calabrian pine). Three plot surfaces of 10m radius were used. VHR Quickbird-2 images are used in combination with an allometric relationship connecting the Tree Crown with the Diameter at breast height (Dbh), and a volume table developed for Greece. The overall methodology is based on individual tree crown delineation, based on (a) the marker-controlled watershed segmentation approach and (b) the GEographic Object-Based Image Analysis approach. The aim of the first approach is to extract separate segments each of them including a single tree and eventual lower vegetation, shadows, etc. The aim of the second approach is to detect and remove the “noisy” background. In the application of the first approach, the Blue, Green, Red, Infrared and PCA-1 bands are tested separately. In the application of the second approach, NDVI and image brightness thresholds are utilized. The achieved results are evaluated against field plot data. Their observed difference are between -5% to +10%.
BENCHMARK OF MACHINE LEARNING METHODS FOR CLASSIFICATION OF A SENTINEL-2 IMAGE
Authors: Pirotti F. , Sunar F. , Piragnolo M.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Thanks to mainly ESA and USGS, a large bulk of free images of the Earth is readily available nowadays. One of the main goals of remote sensing is to label images according to a set of semantic categories, i.e. image classification. This is a very challenging issue since land cover of a specific class may present a large spatial and spectral variability and objects may appear at different scales and orientations. In this study, we report the results of benchmarking 9 machine learning algorithms tested for accuracy and speed in training and classification of land-cover classes in a Sentinel-2 dataset. The following machine learning methods (MLM) have been tested: linear discriminant analysis, k-nearest neighbour, random forests, support vector machines, multi layered perceptron, multi layered perceptron ensemble, ctree, boosting, logarithmic regression. The validation is carried out using a control dataset which consists of an independent classification in 11 land-cover classes of an area about 60 km2, obtained by manual visual interpretation of high resolution images (20 cm ground sampling distance) by experts. In this study five out of the eleven classes are used since the others have too few samples (pixels) for testing and validating subsets. The classes used are the following: (i) urban (ii) sowable areas (iii) water (iv) tree plantations (v) grasslands. Validation is carried out using three different approaches: (i) using pixels from the training dataset (train), (ii) using pixels from the training dataset and applying cross-validation with the k-fold method (kfold) and (iii) using all pixels from the control dataset. Five accuracy indices are calculated for the comparison between the values predicted with each model and control values over three sets of data: the training dataset (train), the whole control dataset (full) and with k-fold cross-validation (kfold) with ten folds. Results from validation of predictions of the whole dataset (full) show the random forests method with the highest values; kappa index ranging from 0.55 to 0.42 respectively with the most and least number pixels for training. The two neural networks (multi layered perceptron and its ensemble) and the support vector machines - with default radial basis function kernel - methods follow closely with comparable performance.
COMBINING SPECTRAL AND TEXTURE FEATURES USING RANDOM FOREST ALGORITHM: EXTRACTING IMPERVIOUS SURFACE AREA IN WUHAN
Authors: Shao Zhenfeng , Zhang Yuan , Zhang Lei , Song Yang , Peng Minjun
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Impervious surface area (ISA) is one of the most important indicators of urban environments. At present, based on multi-resolution remote sensing images, numerous approaches have been proposed to extract impervious surface, using statistical estimation, sub-pixel classification and spectral mixture analysis method of sub-pixel analysis. Through these methods, impervious surfaces can be effectively applied to regional-scale planning and management. However, for the large scale region, high resolution remote sensing images can provide more details, and therefore they will be more conducive to analysis environmental monitoring and urban management. Since the purpose of this study is to map impervious surfaces more effectively, three classification algorithms (random forests, decision trees, and artificial neural networks) were tested for their ability to map impervious surface. Random forests outperformed the decision trees, and artificial neural networks in precision. Combining the spectral indices and texture, random forests is applied to impervious surface extraction with a producer’s accuracy of 0.98, a user’s accuracy of 0.97, and an overall accuracy of 0.98 and a kappa coefficient of 0.97.
ACCOUNTING FOR VARIANCE IN HYPERSPECTRAL DATA COMING FROM LIMITATIONS OF THE IMAGING SYSTEM
Authors: Shurygin B. , Shestakova M. , Nikolenko A. , Badasen E. , Strakhov P.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Over the course of the past few years, a number of methods was developed to incorporate hyperspectral imaging specifics into generic data mining techniques, traditionally used for hyperspectral data processing. Projection pursuit methods embody the largest class of methods empoyed for hyperspectral image data reduction, however, they all have certain drawbacks making them either hard to use or inefficient. It has been shown that hyperspectral image (HSI) statistics tend to display “heavy tails” (Manolakis2003)(Theiler2005), rendering most of the projection pursuit methods hard to use. Taking into consideration the magnitude of described deviations of observed data PDFs from normal distribution, it is apparent that a priori knowledge of variance in data caused by the imaging system is to be employed in order to efficiently classify objects on HSIs (Kerr, 2015), especially in cases of wildly varying SNR. A number of attempts to describe this variance and compensating techniques has been made (Aiazzi2006), however, new data quality standards are not yet set and accounting for the detector response is made under large set of assumptions. Current paper addresses the issue of hyperspectral image classification in the context of different variance sources based on the knowledge of calibration curves (both spectral and radiometric) obtained for each pixel of imaging camera. A camera produced by ZAO NPO Lepton (Russia) was calibrated and used to obtain a test image. A priori known values of SNR and spectral channel cross-correlation were incorporated into calculating test statistics used in dimensionality reduction and feature extraction. Expectation-Maximization classification algorithm modification for non-Gaussian model as described by (Veracini2010) was further employed. The impact of calibration data coarsening by ignoring non-uniformities on false alarm rate was studied. Case study shows both regions of scene-dominated variance and sensor-dominated variance, leading to different preprocession parameters and, ultimatively, classification results. A multilevel system for denoting hyperspectral pushbroom scanners calibration quality was proposed.
INTERVAL TYPE-2 FUZZY BASED NEURAL NETWORK FOR HIGH RESOLUTION REMOTE SENSING IMAGE SEGMENTATION
Authors: Wang Chunyan , Xu Aigong , Li Chao , Zhao Xuemei
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Recently, high resolution remote sensing image segmentation is a hot issue in image procesing procedures. However, it is a difficult task. The difficulties derive from the uncertainties of pixel segmentation and decision-making model. To this end, we take spatial relationship into consideration when constructing the interval type-2 fuzzy neural networks for high resolution remote sensing image segmentation. First, the proposed algorithm constructs a Gaussian model as a type-1 fuzzy model to describe the uncertainty contained in the image. Second, interval type-2 fuzzy model is obtained by blurring the mean and variance in type-1 model. The proposed interval type-2 model can strengthen the expression of uncertainty and simultaneously decrease the uncertainty in the decision model. Then the fuzzy membership function itself and its upper and lower fuzzy membership functions of the training samples are used as the input of neuron network which acts as the decision model in proposed algorithm. Finally, the relationship of neighbour pixels is taken into consideration and the fuzzy membership functions of the detected pixel and its neighbourhood are used to decide the class of each pixel to get the final segmentation result. The proposed algorithm, FCM and HMRF-FCM algorithm and an interval type-2 fuzzy neuron networks without spatial relationships are performed on synthetic and real high resolution remote sensing images. The qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrate the efficient of the proposed algorithm, especially for homogeneous regions which contains a great difference in its gray level (for example forest).
COUPLING REGULAR TESSELLATION WITH RJMCMC ALGORITHM TO SEGMENT SAR IMAGE WITH UNKNOWN NUMBER OF CLASSES
Authors: Wang Y. , Li Y. , Zhao Q. H.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. This paper presents a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image segmentation approach with unknown number of classes, which is based on regular tessellation and Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC') algorithm. First of all, an image domain is portioned into a set of blocks by regular tessellation. The image is modeled on the assumption that intensities of its pixels in each homogeneous region satisfy an identical and independent Gamma distribution. By Bayesian paradigm, the posterior distribution is obtained to build the region-based image segmentation model. Then, a RJMCMC algorithm is designed to simulate from the segmentation model to determine the number of homogeneous regions and segment the image. In order to further improve the segmentation accuracy, a refined operation is performed. To illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach, two real SAR image is tested.
A KERNEL METHOD BASED ON TOPIC MODEL FOR VERY HIGH SPATIAL RESOLUTION (VHSR) REMOTE SENSING IMAGE CLASSIFICATION
Authors: Wu Linmei , Shen Li , Li Zhipeng
Published: June 2016

Abstract. A kernel-based method for very high spatial resolution remote sensing image classification is proposed in this article. The new kernel method is based on spectral-spatial information and structure information as well, which is acquired from topic model, Latent Dirichlet Allocation model. The final kernel function is defined as K = u1Kspec + u2Kspat + u3Kstru, in which Kspec, Kspat, Kstru are radial basis function (RBF) and u1 + u2 + u3 = 1. In the experiment, comparison with three other kernel methods, including the spectral-based, the spectral- and spatial-based and the spectral- and structure-based method, is provided for a panchromatic QuickBird image of a suburban area with a size of 900 × 900 pixels and spatial resolution of 0.6 m. The result shows that the overall accuracy of the spectral- and structure-based kernel method is 80 %, which is higher than the spectral-based kernel method, as well as the spectral- and spatial-based which accuracy respectively is 67 % and 74 %. What's more, the accuracy of the proposed composite kernel method that jointly uses the spectral, spatial, and structure information is highest among the four methods which is increased to 83 %. On the other hand, the result of the experiment also verifies the validity of the expression of structure information about the remote sensing image.
CLASSIFICATION OF URBAN AERIAL DATA BASED ON PIXEL LABELLING WITH DEEP CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS AND LOGISTIC REGRESSION
Authors: Yao W. , Poleswki P. , Krzystek P.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. The recent success of deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) on a large number of applications can be attributed to large amounts of available training data and increasing computing power. In this paper, a semantic pixel labelling scheme for urban areas using multi-resolution CNN and hand-crafted spatial-spectral features of airborne remotely sensed data is presented. Both CNN and hand-crafted features are applied to image/DSM patches to produce per-pixel class probabilities with a L1-norm regularized logistical regression classifier. The evidence theory infers a degree of belief for pixel labelling from different sources to smooth regions by handling the conflicts present in the both classifiers while reducing the uncertainty. The aerial data used in this study were provided by ISPRS as benchmark datasets for 2D semantic labelling tasks in urban areas, which consists of two data sources from LiDAR and color infrared camera. The test sites are parts of a city in Germany which is assumed to consist of typical object classes including impervious surfaces, trees, buildings, low vegetation, vehicles and clutter. The evaluation is based on the computation of pixel-based confusion matrices by random sampling. The performance of the strategy with respect to scene characteristics and method combination strategies is analyzed and discussed. The competitive classification accuracy could be not only explained by the nature of input data sources: e.g. the above-ground height of nDSM highlight the vertical dimension of houses, trees even cars and the nearinfrared spectrum indicates vegetation, but also attributed to decision-level fusion of CNN’s texture-based approach with multichannel spatial-spectral hand-crafted features based on the evidence combination theory.
REMOTE SENSING IMAGE CLASSIFICATION APPLIED TO THE FIRST NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION CENSUS OF CHINA
Authors: Yu Xin , Wen Zongyong , Zhu Zhaorong , Xia Qiang , Shun Lan
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Image classification will still be a long way in the future, although it has gone almost half a century. In fact, researchers have gained many fruits in the image classification domain, but there is still a long distance between theory and practice. However, some new methods in the artificial intelligence domain will be absorbed into the image classification domain and draw on the strength of each to offset the weakness of the other, which will open up a new prospect. Usually, networks play the role of a high-level language, as is seen in Artificial Intelligence and statistics, because networks are used to build complex model from simple components. These years, Bayesian Networks, one of probabilistic networks, are a powerful data mining technique for handling uncertainty in complex domains. In this paper, we apply Tree Augmented Naive Bayesian Networks (TAN) to texture classification of High-resolution remote sensing images and put up a new method to construct the network topology structure in terms of training accuracy based on the training samples. Since 2013, China government has started the first national geographical information census project, which mainly interprets geographical information based on high-resolution remote sensing images. Therefore, this paper tries to apply Bayesian network to remote sensing image classification, in order to improve image interpretation in the first national geographical information census project. In the experiment, we choose some remote sensing images in Beijing. Experimental results demonstrate TAN outperform than Naive Bayesian Classifier (NBC) and Maximum Likelihood Classification Method (MLC) in the overall classification accuracy. In addition, the proposed method can reduce the workload of field workers and improve the work efficiency. Although it is time consuming, it will be an attractive and effective method for assisting office operation of image interpretation.
S-CNN-BASED SHIP DETECTION FROM HIGH-RESOLUTION REMOTE SENSING IMAGES
Authors: Zhang Ruiqian , Yao Jian , Zhang Kao , Feng Chen , Zhang Jiadong
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Reliable ship detection plays an important role in both military and civil fields. However, it makes the task difficult with high-resolution remote sensing images with complex background and various types of ships with different poses, shapes and scales. Related works mostly used gray and shape features to detect ships, which obtain results with poor robustness and efficiency. To detect ships more automatically and robustly, we propose a novel ship detection method based on the convolutional neural networks (CNNs), called SCNN, fed with specifically designed proposals extracted from the ship model combined with an improved saliency detection method. Firstly we creatively propose two ship models, the “V” ship head model and the “||” ship body one, to localize the ship proposals from the line segments extracted from a test image. Next, for offshore ships with relatively small sizes, which cannot be efficiently picked out by the ship models due to the lack of reliable line segments, we propose an improved saliency detection method to find these proposals. Therefore, these two kinds of ship proposals are fed to the trained CNN for robust and efficient detection. Experimental results on a large amount of representative remote sensing images with different kinds of ships with varied poses, shapes and scales demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our proposed S-CNN-Based ship detector.
A DATA FIELD METHOD FOR URBAN REMOTELY SENSED IMAGERY CLASSIFICATION CONSIDERING SPATIAL CORRELATION
Authors: Zhang Y. , Qin K. , Zeng C. , Zhang E. B. , Yue M. X. , Tong X.
Published: June 2016

Abstract. Spatial correlation between pixels is important information for remotely sensed imagery classification. Data field method and spatial autocorrelation statistics have been utilized to describe and model spatial information of local pixels. The original data field method can represent the spatial interactions of neighbourhood pixels effectively. However, its focus on measuring the grey level change between the central pixel and the neighbourhood pixels results in exaggerating the contribution of the central pixel to the whole local window. Besides, Geary’s C has also been proven to well characterise and qualify the spatial correlation between each pixel and its neighbourhood pixels. But the extracted object is badly delineated with the distracting salt-and-pepper effect of isolated misclassified pixels. To correct this defect, we introduce the data field method for filtering and noise limitation. Moreover, the original data field method is enhanced by considering each pixel in the window as the central pixel to compute statistical characteristics between it and its neighbourhood pixels. The last step employs a support vector machine (SVM) for the classification of multi-features (e.g. the spectral feature and spatial correlation feature). In order to validate the effectiveness of the developed method, experiments are conducted on different remotely sensed images containing multiple complex object classes inside. The results show that the developed method outperforms the traditional method in terms of classification accuracies.