Patent ID: 8160296

Claim:
A method of determining a change in a state of an object using remotely sensed data, the method comprising: using a computer-based device implementing the following steps: providing a first image of the object and a second image of the object, which are georeferenced co-registered images of the object, wherein the first image and the second image being spaced apart in time; optionally, performing a preprocessing by converting digital number values of the first and second images to radiance and then radiance to at-sensor reflectance to reduce the impact of variations in illumination and generate a normalized first image and a normalized second image; performing a plurality of pixel-based change detection algorithms, comprising a plurality of algorithms selected from the group consisting of band differencing, image ratioing, vegetation index analysis, principal component analysis, auto-thresholding for band differencing, spectral angle difference, spectral information divergence or a combination of two or more thereof, on the normalized first and second image or the first and second images of the object to obtain a plurality of output difference products, each of the plurality of output difference products containing change information and pseudo change information; combining the plurality of output difference products using a weighted voting scheme, wherein the weights for each plurality of output difference products may be different or same, to form a hybrid change product; and performing a plurality of region-based filtering, comprising texture-based filtering, contextual mapping and morphological processing, on the hybrid change product, wherein the texture-based filtering is computing textural parameters, including mean, variance, homogeneity, contrast, dissimilarity, entropy, energy, and coherence, using a gray level co-occurrence matrix, wherein the contextual mapping is the change detection mapping using inter-pixel dependency, and wherein the morphological processing allows a user to connect unconnected pixels of a same class that are separated by a pixel distance and remove pixel groups of a same class having group size less than the user specified threshold; and displaying outputs from the plurality of region-based filtering or the hybrid change product that shows change pixels and no change pixels.