Patent ID: 8406469

Claim:
A method of progressive band selection for hyperspectral images, the method comprising: calculating a virtual dimensionality of a hyperspectral image containing a plurality of bands to determine a quantity Q defining how many bands in the plurality of bands are needed for a threshold level of information; ranking each band in the plurality of bands based on a statistical measure; selecting Q bands from the plurality of bands to generate a subset of bands based on the virtual dimensionality; and generating an image based on the subset of bands, wherein the statistical measure is entropy defined as H ⁡ ( x ) = ∑ i = 1 N ⁢ p ⁡ ( x i ) ⁢ log 2 ⁢ p ⁡ ( x i ) , where p(x) probability of pixel x within the hyperspectral image calculated by constructing a histogram of image pixels, and N is a number of pixels in the hyperspectral image.