Loss of target information in full pixel and subpixel target detection in hyperspectral data with and without dimensionality reduction

In most hyperspectral target detection applications, targets are usually small and require both spatial as well as spectral detection. Hyperspectral imaging facilitates target detection (TD) applications greatly, however, due to large spectral content, hyperspectral data requires dimensionality reduction (DR) which also leads to loss of target information both at full pixel and subpixel level. Literature reports many DR and TD algorithms in practice. Several studies have focussed on assessing the loss of target information in DR, however, not much work seems to have been done to assess loss of target information in full pixel and subpixel TD in hyperspectral data with and without DR. This paper seeks to study various combinations of DR techniques combined with full pixel and subpixel TD algorithms. The results indicate that in the case of full pixel targets, both DR and TD contribute to the loss of target information, however, there is more loss of target information in the case when DR precedes TD in comparison to a case where TD is applied without DR. In the case of subpixel TD, however, there appears to be loss of subpixel target information in the case where TD alone is performed in comparison to a case where DR precedes TD.