TY - JOUR

T1 - Automatic Relative Radiometric Normalization of Bi-Temporal Satellite Images Using a Coarse-to-Fine Pseudo-Invariant Features Selection and Fuzzy Integral Fusion Strategies

AU - Moghimi, Armin

AU - Mohammadzadeh, Ali

AU - Celik, Turgay

AU - Brisco, Brian

AU - Amani, Meisam

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), European Space Agency (ESA), and Airbus team for freely providing multispectral remote sensing images. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2022/4/1

Y1 - 2022/4/1

N2 - Relative radiometric normalization (RRN) is important for pre-processing and analyzing multitemporal remote sensing (RS) images. Multitemporal RS images usually include different land use/land cover (LULC) types; therefore, considering an identical linear relationship during RRN modeling may result in potential errors in the RRN results. To resolve this issue, we proposed a new automatic RRN technique that efficiently selects the clustered pseudo-invariant features (PIFs) through a coarse-to-fine strategy and uses them in a fusion-based RRN modeling approach. In the coarse stage, an efficient difference index was first generated from the down-sampled reference and target images by combining the spectral correlation, spectral angle mapper (SAM), and Chebyshev distance. This index was then categorized into three groups of changed, unchanged, and uncertain classes using a fast multiple thresholding technique. In the fine stage, the subject image was first segmented into different clusters by the histogram-based fuzzy c-means (HFCM) algorithm. The optimal PIFs were then selected from unchanged and uncertain regions using each cluster’s bivariate joint distribution analysis. In the RRN modeling step, two normalized subject images were first produced using the robust linear regression (RLR) and cluster-wise-RLR (CRLR) methods based on the clustered PIFs. Finally, the normalized images were fused using the Choquet fuzzy integral fusion strategy for overwhelming the discontinuity between clusters in the final results and keeping the radiometric rectification optimal. Several experiments were implemented on four different bi-temporal satellite images and a simulated dataset to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. The results showed that the proposed method yielded superior RRN results and outperformed other considered well-known RRN algorithms in terms of both accuracy level and execution time.

AB - Relative radiometric normalization (RRN) is important for pre-processing and analyzing multitemporal remote sensing (RS) images. Multitemporal RS images usually include different land use/land cover (LULC) types; therefore, considering an identical linear relationship during RRN modeling may result in potential errors in the RRN results. To resolve this issue, we proposed a new automatic RRN technique that efficiently selects the clustered pseudo-invariant features (PIFs) through a coarse-to-fine strategy and uses them in a fusion-based RRN modeling approach. In the coarse stage, an efficient difference index was first generated from the down-sampled reference and target images by combining the spectral correlation, spectral angle mapper (SAM), and Chebyshev distance. This index was then categorized into three groups of changed, unchanged, and uncertain classes using a fast multiple thresholding technique. In the fine stage, the subject image was first segmented into different clusters by the histogram-based fuzzy c-means (HFCM) algorithm. The optimal PIFs were then selected from unchanged and uncertain regions using each cluster’s bivariate joint distribution analysis. In the RRN modeling step, two normalized subject images were first produced using the robust linear regression (RLR) and cluster-wise-RLR (CRLR) methods based on the clustered PIFs. Finally, the normalized images were fused using the Choquet fuzzy integral fusion strategy for overwhelming the discontinuity between clusters in the final results and keeping the radiometric rectification optimal. Several experiments were implemented on four different bi-temporal satellite images and a simulated dataset to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. The results showed that the proposed method yielded superior RRN results and outperformed other considered well-known RRN algorithms in terms of both accuracy level and execution time.

KW - change detection

KW - image fusion

KW - multi-temporal satellite images

KW - pseudo-invariant features (PIFs)

KW - relative radiometric normalization (RRN)

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128852062&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/rs14081777

DO - 10.3390/rs14081777

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85128852062

VL - 14

JO - Remote sensing

JF - Remote sensing

SN - 2072-4292

IS - 8

M1 - 1777

ER -