Wavelet-based Multi-component Denoising on GPU to Improve the Classification of Hyperspectral Images

Supervised classification allows handling a wide range of remote sensing hyperspectral applications. Enhancing the spatial organization of the pixels over the image has proven to be beneficial for the interpretation of the image content, thus increasing the classification accuracy. Denoising in the spatial domain of the image has been shown as a technique that enhances the structures in the image. This paper proposes a multi-component denoising approach in order to increase the classification accuracy when a classification method is applied. It is computed on multicore CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs. The method combines feature extraction based on a 1D discrete wavelet transform (DWT) applied in the spectral dimension followed by an Extended Morphological Profile (EMP) and a classifier (SVM or ELM). The multi-component noise reduction is applied to the EMP just before the classification. The denoising recursively applies a separable 2D DWT after which the number of wavelet coefficients is reduced by using a threshold. Finally, inverse 2D-DWT filters are applied to reconstruct the noise free original component. The computational cost of the classifiers as well as the cost of the whole classification chain is high but it is reduced achieving real-time behavior for some applications through their computation on NVIDIA multi-GPU platforms.