Relative truth value acquisition method of heterogeneous surface based on the Improved Point Spread Function

Abstract. The acquisition of pixel-scale relative truth value is important for remote sensing validation.The Point Spread Function (PSF) has been widely used in the field of the acquisition of relative truth value of heterogeneous surface. In this study, we propose an Improved Point Spread Function (IPSF) based on the Median Pixel Variability Weighted (MPVW) method and PSF to acquire relative truth value of heterogeneous surface. Firstly, the size of variance and clustering window are confirmed based on the pixel scale information of the satellite product to be validated. Secondly, the PSF suitable for heterogeneous surface is selected from 5 PSFs. Thirdly, the IPSF is constructed according to the MPVW and the PSF suitable for heterogeneous surface. Finally, the IPSF is used to acquire relative true value at pixel-scale of heterogeneous surface from airborne hyperspectral image. This study shows: (1) Good correlation between relative true value obtained using IPSF and reference value is indicated as R² values among 256 channels reach 0.985, structural similarity (SSIM) ranges from 0.992 to 0.998, and peak signal noise ratio (PSNR) more than 35dB. (2) Better accuracy performance is observed in the acquisition of relative truth value of heterogeneous surface for IPSF than PSF. Compared with conventional PSF, the R², PSNR and SSIM of the result of IPSF are increased by about 1.34%, 9% and 0.7% on the average. (3) Significant advantage of IPSF is also reported in reducing the deviation compared to PSF, as the average root mean square error (RMSE_ave) is reduced by 30.37% and the average mean absolute error (MAE_ave) is reduced by 35.98%, respectively. (4) Comparing the RMSE and MAE of PSF and IPSF result, the RMSE and MAE of the result of IPSF become smaller. The RMSE decreases from 3 ~ 195 to 2 ~ 131. The MAE changes from 2 ~ 138 to 1 ~ 89. Overall, the IPSF proposed in this paper can effectively calculate the relative true value of heterogeneous surface, which can provide reference for the validation of multi-spectral and hyper-spectral satellite products.