From model-based optimization algorithms to deep learning models for clustering hyperspectral images

Abstract

Hyperspectral images (HSIs), captured by different Earth observation airborne and space-borne systems, provide rich spectral information in hundreds of bands, enabling far better discrimination between ground materials that are often indistinguishable in visible and multi-spectral images. Clustering of HSIs, which aims to unveil class patterns in an unsupervised way, is highly important in the interpretation of HSI, especially when labelled data are not available. A number of HSI clustering methods have been proposed. Among them, model-based optimization algorithms, which learn the cluster structure of data by solving convex/non-convex optimization problems, have achieved the current state-of-the-art performance. Recent works extend the model-based algorithms to deep versions with deep neural networks, obtaining huge breakthroughs in clustering performance. However, a systematic survey on the topic is absent. This article provides a comprehensive overview of clustering methods of HSI and tracked the latest techniques and breakthroughs in the domain, including the traditional model-based optimization algorithms and the emerging deep learning based clustering methods. With a new taxonomy, we elaborated on the main ideas, technical details, advantages, and disadvantages of different types of clustering methods of HSIs. We provided a systematic performance comparison between different clustering methods by conducting extensive experiments on real HSIs. Unsolved problems and future research trends in the domain are pointed out. Moreover, we provided a toolbox that contains implementations of representative clustering algorithms to help researchers to develop their own models.

Publication
REMOTE SENSING
Shaoguang Huang
Postdoctoral researcher

My research interests include image processing, sparse modelling and hyperspectral image analysis.