NON-LINEAR AUTOENCODER BASED ALGORITHM FOR DIMENSIONALITY REDUCTION OF AIRBORNE HYPERSPECTRAL DATA

Abstract. Hyperspectral remote sensing is an advanced remote sensing technology that enhances the ability of accurate classification due to presence of narrow contiguous bands. The large number of continuous bands present in hyperspectral data introduces the problem of computational complexity due to presence of redundant information. There is a need for dimensionality reduction to enhance the ability of users for better characterization of features. Due to presence of high spectral correlation in the hyperspectral datasets, optimum de-correlation technique is required which transforms the hyperspectral data to lower dimensions without compromising with the desirable information present in the data. In this paper, focus has been to reduce the spectral dimensionality problem. So, this research aimed to develop computationally efficient non-linear autoencoder algorithm taking the advantage of non-linear properties of hyperspectral data. The proposed algorithm was applied on airborne hyperspectral image of Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer - Next Generation (AVIRIS-NG) over Anand region of Gujarat and the performance of the algorithm was evaluated. The Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) increased from 22.78 dB to 48.48 dB with increase in number of nodes in bottleneck layer for reconstruction of image. Spectral distortion was also measured using Spectral Angle Mapper Algorithm (SAM), which reduced from 0.38 to 0.05 with increase in number of nodes in bottleneck layer up to 10. So, this algorithm was able to give good reconstruction of original image from the nodes present in the bottleneck layer.