Unsupervised Multiple Change Detection in Remote Sensing Images via Generative Representation Learning Network

Abstract

With abundant temporal, spectral, and spatial information, multispectral images are proficient for acquiring a superior comprehension of the Earth’s condition and its changes, which enables the achievement of multiple change detection (CD) tasks. However, high temporal, spatial, and spectral information of data brings obstacles to perform multiple change analysis due to the lack of effective feature extraction operation. In addition, the traditional multiple CD methods rely too much on manual participation. Here, a generative representation learning network (GRN) and a cyclic clustering technique are combined into a unified model, which is driven to learn spatial–temporal–spectral features for unsupervised multiple CD. GRN aims to efficiently extract and merge robust difference information with a recurrent learning mechanism for self-adaptive classification refinement, in which different types of changes can be identified and highlighted. Furthermore, a cyclic training strategy is designed to refine the clustering-friendly features, in which similar change types are gradually merged into the same classes. Meanwhile, the number of change types will be optimized through a self-adaptive way and eventually converge to its stable state, which is close to the real distribution. Experimental results on real multispectral datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed model on multiple CD.