Noise reduction and destriping using local spatial statistics and quadratic regression from Hyperion images

Abstract

Hyperion images from Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) are being used in natural resources assessment and management. The evaluation and verification of Hyperion images for the above applications are validating the EO-1 mission. However, the presence of random and striping noises in Hyperion images affect the accuracy of the results. Therefore, reduction of random noise and stripes from Hyperion images becomes indispensable for the evaluation of the results in natural resources assessment and in optimum use of the data. Thus, a collective approach for correcting pixels with no-data values and removing random noise and stripes from Hyperion radiance images is developed. In the developed method, first, no-data valued pixels are identified and corrected using a local median filter. Minimum noise fraction transformation is then used to reduce random noise from noise-dominated bands. Further, spatial statistical techniques are used to reduce random noise from the rest of the bands. Finally, a local quadratic regression by a least squares method is used to correct bad columns and global stripes, and a local-spatial-statistics-based algorithm is used to detect and correct local stripes. The effectiveness and efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated by application to two Hyperion images: one from the Udaipur area, western India, and another from the Lulea area, northern Sweden. The results show that the algorithm reduces random and striping noise without introducing unwanted effects and alterations in the original normal data values in the images.