Using Linear Spectral Unmixing for Subpixel Mapping of Hyperspectral Imagery: A Quantitative Assessment

Subpixel mapping techniques have been widely utilized to determine the spatial distribution of the different land-cover classes in mixed pixels at a subpixel scale by converting low-resolution fractional abundance maps (estimated by a linear mixture model) into a finer classification map. Over the past decades, many subpixel mapping algorithms have been proposed to tackle this problem. It has been obvious that the utilized abundance map has a strong impact on the subsequent subpixel mapping procedure. However, limited attention has been given to the impact of the different aspects in the spectral unmixing model on the subpixel mapping performance. In this paper, a detailed quantitative assessment of different aspects in linear spectral mixture analysis, such as the criteria used to determine the types of pixels, the abundance sum-to-one constraint in the unmixing, and the accuracy of the utilized abundance maps, is investigated. This is accomplished by designing an experimental procedure with replaceable components. A total of six hyperspectral images (four synthetic and two real) were utilized in our experiments. By investigating these critical issues, we can further improve the performance of subpixel mapping techniques.