Semi-Automatic System for Land Cover Change Detection Using Bi-Temporal Remote Sensing Images

An Airport Knowledge-Based Method for Accurate Change Analysis of Airport Runways in VHR Remote Sensing Images

Due to the complexity of airport background and runway structure, the performances of most runway extraction methods are limited. Furthermore, at present, the military fields attach greater importance to semantic changes of some objects in the airport, but few studies have been done on this subject. To address these issues, this paper proposes an accurate runway change analysis method, which comprises two stages: airport runway extraction and runway change analysis. For the former stage, some airport knowledge, such as chevron markings and runway edge markings, are first applied in combination with multiple features of runways to improve the accuracy. In addition, the proposed method can accomplish airport runway extraction automatically. For the latter, semantic information and vector results of runway changes can be obtained simultaneously by comparing bi-temporal runway extraction results. In six test images with about 0.5-m spatial resolution, the average completeness of runway extraction is nearly 100%, and the average quality is nearly 89%. In addition, the final experiment using two sets of bi-temporal very high-resolution (VHR) images of runway changes demonstrated that semantic results obtained by our method are consistent with the real situation and the final accuracy is over 80%. Overall, the airport knowledge, especially chevron markings for runways and runway edge markings, are critical to runway recognition/detection, and multiple features of runways, such as shape and parallel line features, can further improve the completeness and accuracy of runway extraction. Finally, a small step has been taken in the study of runway semantic changes, which cannot be accomplished by change detection alone.

Toward Super-Resolution Image Construction Based on Joint Tensor Decomposition

In recent years, fusing hyperspectral images (HSIs) and multispectral images (MSIs) to acquire super-resolution images (SRIs) has been in the spotlight and gained tremendous attention. However, some current methods, such as those based on low rank matrix decomposition, also have a fair share of challenges. These algorithms carry out the matrixing process for the original image tensor, which will lose the structure information of the original image. In addition, there is no corresponding theory to prove whether the algorithm can guarantee the accurate restoration of the fused image due to the non-uniqueness of matrix decomposition. Moreover, degenerate operators are usually unknown or difficult to estimate in some practical applications. In this paper, an image fusion method based on joint tensor decomposition (JTF) is proposed, which is more effective and more applicable to the circumstance that degenerate operators are unknown or tough to gauge. Specifically, in the proposed JTF method, we consider SRI as a three-dimensional tensor and redefine the fusion problem with the decomposition issue of joint tensors. We then formulate the JTF algorithm, and the experimental results certify the superior performance of the proposed method in comparison to the current popular schemes.

Fusion of MODIS and Landsat-Like Images for Daily High Spatial Resolution NDVI

One of the obstacles in monitoring agricultural crops is the difficulty in understanding and mapping rapid changes of these crops. With the purpose of addressing this issue, this study aimed to model and fuse the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) using Landsat-like images to achieve daily high spatial resolution NDVI. The study was performed for the period of 2017 on a commercial farm of irrigated maize-soybean rotation in the western region of the state of Bahia, Brazil. To achieve the objective, the following procedures were performed: (i) Landsat-like images were upscaled to match the Landsat-8 spatial resolution (30 m); (ii) the reflectance of Landsat-like images was intercalibrated using the Landsat-8 as a reference; (iii) Landsat-like reflectance images were upscaled to match the MODIS sensor spatial resolution (250 m); (iv) regression models were trained daily to model MODIS NDVI using the upscaled Landsat-like reflectance images (250 m) of the closest day as the input; and (v) the intercalibrated version of the Landsat-like images (30 m) used in the previous step was used as the input for the trained model, resulting in a downscaled MODIS NDVI (30 m). To determine the best fitting model, we used the following statistical metrics: coefficient of determination (r2), root mean square error (RMSE), Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency index (NSE), mean bias error (MBE), and mean absolute error (MAE). Among the assessed regression models, the Cubist algorithm was sensitive to changes in agriculture and performed best in modeling of the Landsat-like MODIS NDVI. The results obtained in the present research are promising and can enable the monitoring of dynamic phenomena with images available free of charge, changing the way in which decisions are made using satellite images.

Methods and Challenges Using Multispectral and Hyperspectral Images for Practical Change Detection Applications

Multispectral (MS) and hyperspectral (HS) images have been successfully and widely used in remote sensing applications such as target detection, change detection, and anomaly detection. In this paper, we aim at reviewing recent change detection papers and raising some challenges and opportunities in the field from a practitioner’s viewpoint using MS and HS images. For example, can we perform change detection using synthetic hyperspectral images? Can we use temporally-fused images to perform change detection? Some of these areas are ongoing and will require more research attention in the coming years. Moreover, in order to understand the context of our paper, some recent and representative algorithms in change detection using MS and HS images are included, and their advantages and disadvantages will be highlighted.

Spatial–Spectral Feature Fusion Coupled with Multi-Scale Segmentation Voting Decision for Detecting Land Cover Change with VHR Remote Sensing Images

In this article, a novel approach for land cover change detection (LCCD) using very high resolution (VHR) remote sensing images based on spatial–spectral feature fusion and multi-scale segmentation voting decision is proposed. Unlike other traditional methods that have used a single feature without post-processing on a raw detection map, the proposed approach uses spatial–spectral features and post-processing strategies to improve detecting accuracies and performance. Our proposed approach involved two stages. First, we explored the spatial features of the VHR remote sensing image to complement the insufficiency of the spectral feature, and then fused the spatial–spectral features with different strategies. Next, the Manhattan distance between the corresponding spatial–spectral feature vectors of the bi-temporal images was employed to measure the change magnitude between the bi-temporal images and generate a change magnitude image (CMI). Second, the use of the Otsu binary threshold algorithm was proposed to divide the CMI into a binary change detection map (BCDM) and a multi-scale segmentation voting decision algorithm to fuse the initial BCDMs as the final change detection map was proposed. Experiments were carried out on three pairs of bi-temporal remote sensing images with VHR remote sensing images. The results were compared with those of the state-of-the-art methods including four popular contextual-based LCCD methods and three post-processing LCCD methods. Experimental comparisons demonstrated that the proposed approach had an advantage over other state-of-the-art techniques in terms of detection accuracies and performance.

Hyperspectral Pansharpening Based on Homomorphic Filtering and Weighted Tensor Matrix

Hyperspectral pansharpening is an effective technique to obtain a high spatial resolution hyperspectral (HS) image. In this paper, a new hyperspectral pansharpening algorithm based on homomorphic filtering and weighted tensor matrix (HFWT) is proposed. In the proposed HFWT method, open-closing morphological operation is utilized to remove the noise of the HS image, and homomorphic filtering is introduced to extract the spatial details of each band in the denoised HS image. More importantly, a weighted root mean squared error-based method is proposed to obtain the total spatial information of the HS image, and an optimized weighted tensor matrix based strategy is presented to integrate spatial information of the HS image with spatial information of the panchromatic (PAN) image. With the appropriate integrated spatial details injection, the fused HS image is generated by constructing the suitable gain matrix. Experimental results over both simulated and real datasets demonstrate that the proposed HFWT method effectively generates the fused HS image with high spatial resolution while maintaining the spectral information of the original low spatial resolution HS image.

LIDAR Point Cloud Registration for Sensing and Reconstruction of Unstructured Terrain

When 3D laser scanning (LIDAR) is used for navigation of autonomous vehicles operated on unstructured terrain, it is necessary to register the acquired point cloud and accurately perform point cloud reconstruction of the terrain in time. This paper proposes a novel registration method to deal with uneven-density and high-noise of unstructured terrain point clouds. It has two steps of operation, namely initial registration and accurate registration. Multisensor data is firstly used for initial registration. An improved Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm is then deployed for accurate registration. This algorithm extracts key points and builds feature descriptors based on the neighborhood normal vector, point cloud density and curvature. An adaptive threshold is introduced to accelerate iterative convergence. Experimental results are given to show that our two-step registration method can effectively solve the uneven-density and high-noise problem in registration of unstructured terrain point clouds, thereby improving the accuracy of terrain point cloud reconstruction.