Multiple-Feature Kernel-Based Probabilistic Clustering for Unsupervised Band Selection

This paper presents a new method to perform unsupervised band selection (UBS) with hyperspectral data. The method provides a probabilistic clustering approach. The band images are clustered in the image space by computing their posterior class probability. Then, for each cluster, the band exhibiting the highest probability of belonging to it is selected as cluster exemplar. More particularly, the proposed method falls into information-maximization clustering methods, where the posterior class probability is modeled and the parameters of the models are derived by maximizing the information between the data and the unknown cluster labels. In this context, we propose a new image representation for hyperspectral images, based on the first- and second-order statistics of multiple image features. We refer to this representation as multiple-feature local statistical descriptors (MLSD). The descriptors are computed with respect to regular grids, and a special pixel selection procedure reduces the number of samples within each block of the grid. A kernel-based model that embeds the MLSD is then proposed for the posterior class probability. The model is finally optimized according to an information-maximization criterion. We conduct several experiments to determine the best parameters for the proposed approach and compare the latter with other state-of-the-art UBS methods. Quantitative evaluations show that, by employing our band selection method, higher performance in terms of classification accuracy and endmember extraction can be achieved in comparison with the state of the art.