A novel hierarchical method for change detection in multitemporal hyperspectral images

This paper addressed the change-detection problem in multitemporal hyperspectral remote sensing images (CD-HS). The concept of “change” in multitemporal hyperspectral images is analyzed from the viewpoint of single pixel spectral signal. A novel hierarchical change-detection approach is proposed by considering both the change magnitude and spectral change information, which aims to identify the change classes having discriminable spectral behaviors. The proposed method is developed in an unsupervised way thus to provide a solution for real CD-HS cases, for which reference samples are often not available. Experimental results obtained on multitemporal Hyperion hyperspectral images confirm the effectiveness of the proposed change-detection approach.