<title>High-dimensional multispectral image fusion: classification by neural network</title>

Abstract

Advances in sensor technology for Earth observation make it possible to collect multispectral data in much higher dimensionality. Such high dimensional data will it possible to classify more classes. However, it will also have several impacts on processing technology. First, because of its huge data, more processing power will be needed to process such high dimensional data. Second, because of its high dimensionality and the limited training samples, it is very difficult for Bayes method to estimate the parameters accurately. So the classification accuracy cannot be high enough. Neural Network is an intelligent signal processing method. MLFNN (Multi-Layer Feedforward Neural Network) directly learn from training samples and the probability model needs not to be estimated, the classification may be conducted through neural network fusion of multispectral images. The latent information about different classes can be extracted from training samples by MLFNN. However, because of the huge data and high dimensionality, MLFNN will face some serious difficulties: (1) There are many local minimal points in the error surface of MLFNN; (2) Over-fitting phenomena. These two difficulties depress the classification accuracy and generalization performance of MLFNN. In order to overcome these difficulties, the author proposed DPFNN (Double Parallel Feedforward Neural Networks) used to classify the high dimensional multispectral images. The model and learning algorithm of DPFNN with strong generalization performance are proposed, with emphases on the regularization of output weights and improvement of the generalization performance of DPFNN. As DPFNN is composed of MLFNN and SLFNN (Single-Layer Feedforward Neural Network), it has the advantages of MLFNN and SLFNN: (1) Good nonlinear mapping capability; (2) High learning speed for linear-like problem. Experimental results with generated data, 64-band practical multispectral images and 220-band multispectral images show that the new algorithm can overcome the over-fitting phenomena effectively and improve the generalization performance of DPFNN greatly. The classification accuracy of DPFNN with the new learning algorithm is much better than the traditional one.