Parallel Implementation of Hyperspectral Image Processing Algorithms

High computing performance of algorithm analysis is essential in many hyperspectral imaging applications, including automatic target recognition for homeland defense and security, risk/hazard prevention and monitoring, wild-land fire tracking and biological threat detection. Despite the growing interest in hyperspectral imaging research, only a few efforts devoted to designing and implementing well-conformed parallel processing solutions currently exist in the open literature. With the recent explosion in the amount and dimensionality of hyperspectral imagery, parallel processing is expected to become a requirement in most remote sensing missions. In this paper, we take a necessary first step towards the quantitative comparison of parallel techniques and strategies for analyzing hyperspectral data sets. Our focus is on three types of algorithms: automatic target recognition, spectral mixture analysis and data compression. Three types of high performance computing platforms are used for demonstration purposes, including commodity cluster-based systems, heterogeneous networks of distributed workstations and hardware-based computer architectures. Combined, these parts deliver a snapshot of the state of the art in those areas, and offer a thoughtful perspective on the potential and emerging challenges of incorporating parallel computing models into hyperspectral remote sensing problems.