Class wise optimal feature selection for land cover classification using SAR data

Abstract

Conventional methods for classifying SAR data, such as H-α decomposition, Wishart classifier etc. are quite complex and classifies data only on the basis of polarimetric information. With the advent of distinct feature types, their role in land cover classification using SAR data could be analysed. For the sake of classification, researchers are extracting and combining several features in order to obtain the best attainable accuracy. But the usage of several feature type is not only increasing the computational complexity, but also the salience of each of the feature type remains unhighlighted. Hence, it became difficult to analyse that which feature type are best suitable for classification and selection of suitable features for land cover classification is challenging as each feature has its own significance level. Therefore, in this paper class wise, optimal feature selection for land cover classification has been performed using SAR data. For optimal feature selection, four types of feature set polarimetric features, texture features, color features and wavelet features have been examined. For class wise feature subset selection separability index criteria and classification results obtained using Naive Bayes classifier has been utilized. With the proposed methodology overall 10 features has been selected among the total 37 feature analysed with fine land cover classification accuracy of 91%.