A New Unsupervised Change Detection Approach Based On DWT Image Fusion And Backtracking Search Optimization Algorithm For Optical Remote Sensing Data

Abstract. Change detection is one of the most important subjects of remote sensing discipline. In this paper, a new unsupervised change detection approach is proposed for multi-temporal remotely sensed optic imagery. This approach does not require any prior information about changed and unchanged pixels. The approach is based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) based image fusion and Backtracking Search Optimization Algorithm (BSA). In the first step of the approach, absolute-valued difference image and absolute-valued log-ratio image is calculated from co-registered and radiometrically corrected multi-temporal images. Then, these difference images are fused using DWT. The fused image is filtered by median filter for edge information preservation and by wiener filter for image smoothing. Then, a min-max normalization is applied to the filtered data. The normalized data is clustered into two groups with BSA as changed and unchanged pixels by minimizing an objective function, unlike classical methods using CVA, PCA, FCM or K-means techniques. To show effectiveness of proposed approach, two remote sensing data sets, Sardinia and Mexico, are used. False Alarm, Missed Alarm, Total Alarm and Total Error Rate are selected as performance criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of new approach using ground truth images. Experimental results show that proposed approach is effective for unsupervised change detection of optical remote sensing data.