Seok-Keun Choi

Object-Based Change Detection of Very High Resolution Satellite Imagery Using the Cross-Sharpening of Multitemporal Data

In this letter, we present a method for unsupervised change detection based on the cross-sharpening of multitemporal images and image segmentation. Our method effectively reduces the change detection errors caused by relief or spatial displacement between multitemporal images with different acquisition angles. A total of four cross-sharpened images, including two general pansharpened images, were generated. Then, two pairs of cross-sharpened images were analyzed using change detection indexes. The effectiveness of the proposed method compared with other unsupervised change detection methods is demonstrated through experimentation.

Sharpening the VNIR and SWIR Bands of Sentinel-2A Imagery through Modified Selected and Synthesized Band Schemes

In this work, the bands of a Sentinel-2A image with spatial resolutions of 20 m and 60 m are sharpened to a spatial resolution of 10 m to obtain visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) spectral bands with a spatial resolution of 10 m. In particular, we propose a two-step sharpening algorithm for Sentinel-2A imagery based on modified, selected, and synthesized band schemes using layer-stacked bands to sharpen Sentinel-2A images. The modified selected and synthesized band schemes proposed in this study extend the existing band schemes for sharpening Sentinel-2A images with spatial resolutions of 20 m and 60 m to improve the pan-sharpening accuracy by changing the combinations of bands used for multiple linear regression analysis through band-layer stacking. The proposed algorithms are applied to the pan-sharpening algorithm based on component substitution (CS) and a multiresolution analysis (MRA), and our results are then compared to the sharpening results when using sharpening algorithms based on existing band schemes. The experimental results show that the sharpening results from the proposed algorithm are improved in terms of the spatial and spectral properties when compared to existing methods. However, the results of the sharpening algorithm when applied to our modified band schemes show differing tendencies. With the modified, selected band scheme, the sharpening result when applying the CS-based algorithm is higher than the result when applying the MRA-based algorithm. However, the quality of the sharpening results when using the MRA-based algorithm with the modified synthesized band scheme is higher than that when using the CS-based algorithm.

Image Fusion-Based Land Cover Change Detection Using Multi-Temporal High-Resolution Satellite Images

Change detection is usually treated as a problem of explicitly detecting land cover transitions in satellite images obtained at different times, and helps with emergency response and government management. This study presents an unsupervised change detection method based on the image fusion of multi-temporal images. The main objective of this study is to improve the accuracy of unsupervised change detection from high-resolution multi-temporal images. Our method effectively reduces change detection errors, since spatial displacement and spectral differences between multi-temporal images are evaluated. To this end, a total of four cross-fused images are generated with multi-temporal images, and the iteratively reweighted multivariate alteration detection (IR-MAD) method—a measure for the spectral distortion of change information—is applied to the fused images. In this experiment, the land cover change maps were extracted using multi-temporal IKONOS-2, WorldView-3, and GF-1 satellite images. The effectiveness of the proposed method compared with other unsupervised change detection methods is demonstrated through experimentation. The proposed method achieved an overall accuracy of 80.51% and 97.87% for cases 1 and 2, respectively. Moreover, the proposed method performed better when differentiating the water area from the vegetation area compared to the existing change detection methods. Although the water area beneath moderate and sparse vegetation canopy was captured, vegetation cover and paved regions of the water body were the main sources of omission error, and commission errors occurred primarily in pixels of mixed land use and along the water body edge. Nevertheless, the proposed method, in conjunction with high-resolution satellite imagery, offers a robust and flexible approach to land cover change mapping that requires no ancillary data for rapid implementation.

A Hybrid Pansharpening Algorithm of VHR Satellite Images that Employs Injection Gains Based on NDVI to Reduce Computational Costs

The objective of this work is to develop an algorithm for pansharpening of very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery that reduces the spectral distortion of the pansharpened images and enhances their spatial clarity with minimal computational costs. In order to minimize the spectral distortion and computational costs, the global injection gain is transformed to the local injection gains using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), on the assumption that the NDVI are positively or negatively correlated with local injection gains obtained from each band of the satellite data. In addition, the local injection gains are then applied in the hybrid pansharpening algorithm to optimize the spatial clarity. In particular, in the proposed algorithm, a synthetic intensity image is determined using block-based linear regression. In experiments using imagery collected by various satellites, such as KOrea Multi-Purpose SATellite-3 (KOMPSAT-3), KOMPSAT-3A and WorldView-3, the pansharpened results obtained using the proposed Hybrid Pansharpening algorithm using NDVI and based on the spectral mode (HP-NDVIspectral) provide a better representation of the values of the Erreur Relative Globale Adimensionnelle de Synthese (ERGAS), the spectral angle mapper (SAM) and the Q4/Q8 than those produced by existing pansharpening algorithms. In terms of spatial quality, the pansharpened images obtained using the proposed pansharpening algorithm based on the spatial mode (HP-NDVIspatial) have higher average gradient (AG) values than those obtained using existing pansharpening methods. In addition, the computational complexity of our method is similar to that of a pansharpening algorithm that is based on a global injection model, although our methodology has characteristics that are similar to those of a local injection gain-based model that has a very high computational cost. Thus, the quantitative and qualitative assessments presented here indicate that the proposed algorithm can be utilized in various applications that employ spectral information or require high spatial clarity.