A Survey on Superpixel Segmentation as a Preprocessing Step in Hyperspectral Image Analysis

Subhashree Subudhi, Ram Narayan Patro, Pradyut Kumar Biswal, Fabio Dell'Acqua
2021 IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing  
Recent developments in hyperspectral sensors have made it possible to acquire HyperSpectral Images (HSI) with higher spectral and spatial resolution. Hence, it is now possible to extract detailed information about relatively smaller structures. Despite these advantages, HSI suffers from many challenges also, like higher spatial variability of spectral signatures, the Hughes effect due to higher dimensionality, and a limited number of labeled training samples compared to the dimensions of the
more » ... ctral space. Superpixels can be a potentially effective tool in tackling these challenges. Superpixel segmentation is a process of segmenting the spatial image into several semantic sub-regions with similar characteristic features. Such grouping by similarity can significantly ease the subsequent processing steps. Because of this, superpixels have been successfully applied to various fields of HSI processing like Classification, Spectral Unmixing, Dimensionality Reduction, Band Selection, Active Learning, Denoising, and Anomaly Detection. This paper focuses on Classification, presenting a detailed survey of superpixel segmentation approaches for the classification of HSI. The Superpixel creation algorithm framework and post-processing frameworks for superpixels in HSI are also analyzed. Also, a brief description of various application areas of superpixels is provided. An experimental analysis of existing superpixel segmentation approaches is also provided in this paper, supported by quantitative results on standard benchmark datasets. The challenges and future research directions for the implementation of superpixel algorithms are also discussed.
doi:10.1109/jstars.2021.3076005 fatcat:smfb6jeox5eldbv6ys7ioeoko4