Hyperspectral Image Classification via Compressive Sensing

Although hyperspectral technology has continued to improve over the years, it is still limited to size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints. One major issue is the need to sample a large number of very fine spectral bands. Such prohibitively large size of hyperpsectral data creates challenges in both data archival and processing. Compressive sensing (CS) is an enabling technology for reducing the overall data processing and SWaP requirements. This paper explores the viability of performing classification for hyperspectral data on a compressively sensed band domain (CSBD) via CS instead of the original data space, without performing sparse reconstruction. In particular, the well-known restricted isometry property (RIP) and a random spectral sampling strategy are explored for hyperspectral image classification (HSIC) in CSBD. A mathematical analysis is also presented to show that the classification error can be expressed in terms of the restricted isometry constant (RIC) so that the HSIC in the original full-band data space can be achieved in CSBD provided that sufficient band-sensing conditions are met. To validate the proposed CS-HSIC a set of real hyperspectral image experiments are performed where a commonly used spectral-spatial classification algorithm based on support vector machine (SVM) and edge-preserving filters (EPFs) is implemented for a comparative study and analysis. The results clearly demonstrate the potential of CS-HSIC in future research directions.