Endmember Extraction From Hyperspectral Imagery Based on Probabilistic Tensor Moments

Abstract

This letter presents a novel hyperspectral endmember extraction approach that integrates a tensor-based decomposition scheme with a probabilistic framework in order to take advantage of both technologies when uncovering the signatures of pure spectral constituents in the scene. On the one hand, statistical unmixing models are generally able to provide accurate endmember estimates by means of rather complex optimization algorithms. On the other hand, tensor decomposition techniques are very effective factorization tools which are often constrained by the lack of physical interpretation within the remote sensing field. In this context, this letter develops a new hybrid endmember extraction approach based on the decomposition of the probabilistic tensor moments of the hyperspectral data. Initially, the input image reflectance values are modeled as a collection of multinomial distributions provided by a family of Dirichlet generalized functions. Then, the unmixing process is effectively conducted by the tensor decomposition of the third-order probabilistic tensor moments of the multivariate data. Our experiments, conducted over four hyperspectral data sets, reveal that the proposed approach is able to provide efficient and competitive results when compared to different state-of-the-art endmember extraction methods.