Unsupervised change detection of VHR remote sensing images based on multi-resolution Markov Random Field in wavelet domain

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper proposes an unsupervised change detection method for very-high-resolution (VHR) remote sensing images based on multi-resolution Markov random field (MRF) model in wavelet domain. Firstly, the wavelet transform is performed on the difference image achieved by the change vector analysis (CVA) method, and the wavelet coefficients at each scale are obtained. Then, MRF model is constructed based on the wavelet coefficients. The wavelet high-frequency coefficients establish a feature field model that describes the feature attributes of each pixel location at each scale. The initial change map (changed and unchanged) at the coarse scale are generated through applying the k-means method to the wavelet low-frequency coefficients, and a label field model describing the region of the variation results is established. The label and feature field, at the same scale, got the optimized change map under the Bayesian criterion. Finally, the results of the low-resolution scale change map are directly projected as the adjacent higher-scale initial change map. The more accurate change map is obtained successively from the coarse scale to the original resolution scale, and the detection result of the original resolution is obtained at last. Experiments on Quick Bird, SPOT-5, and IKONOS optical images have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the method has better regional consistency and strong robustness.