Component analysis-based unsupervised linear spectral mixture analysis for hyperspectral imagery

One of the most challenging issues in unsupervised linear spectral mixture analysis (LSMA) is how to obtain unknown knowledge of target signatures referred to as virtual endmembers (VEs) directly from the data to be processed. This issue has never arisen in supervised LSMA where the VEs are either assumed to be known a priori or can be provided by visual inspection. With the recent advent of hyperspectral sensor technology many unknown and subtle signal sources can be uncovered and revealed without prior knowledge. This paper addresses this issue and develops a component analysis-based unsupervised LSMA where the desired VEs can be extracted by component analysis-based transforms directly from the data to be processed without appealing for prior knowledge. In order to substantiate the utility of the proposed approach extensive experiments are conducted for demonstration.