Geometric Unmixing of Large Hyperspectral Images: A Barycentric Coordinate Approach

In hyperspectral imaging, spectral unmixing is one of the most challenging and fundamental problems. It consists of breaking down the spectrum of a mixed pixel into a set of pure spectra, called endmembers, and their contributions, called abundances. Many endmember extraction techniques have been proposed in literature, based on either a statistical or a geometrical formulation. However, most, if not all, of these techniques for estimating abundances use a least-squares solution. In this paper, we show that abundances can be estimated using a geometric formulation. To this end, we express abundances with the barycentric coordinates in the simplex defined by endmembers. We propose to write them in terms of a ratio of volumes or a ratio of distances, which are quantities that are often computed to identify endmembers. This property allows us to easily incorporate abundance estimation within conventional endmember extraction techniques, without incurring additional computational complexity. We use this key property with various endmember extraction techniques, such as N-Findr, vertex component analysis, simplex growing algorithm, and iterated constrained endmembers. The relevance of the method is illustrated with experimental results on real hyperspectral images.