Spectral-Similarity-Based Kernel of SVM for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Spectral similarity measures can be regarded as potential metrics for kernel functions, and can be used to generate spectral-similarity-based kernels. However, spectral-similarity-based kernels have not received significant attention from researchers. In this paper, we propose two novel spectral-similarity-based kernels based on spectral angle mapper (SAM) and spectral information divergence (SID) combined with the radial basis function (RBF) kernel: Power spectral angle mapper RBF (Power-SAM-RBF) and normalized spectral information divergence-based RBF (Normalized-SID-RBF) kernels. First, we prove these spectral-similarity-based kernels to be Mercer’s kernels. Second, we analyze their efficiency in terms of local and global kernels. Finally, we consider three hyperspectral datasets to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed spectral-similarity-based kernels. Experimental results demonstrate that the Power-SAM-RBF and SAM-RBF kernels can obtain an impressive performance, particularly the Power-SAM-RBF kernel. For example, when the ratio of the training set is 20 % , the kappa coefficient of Power-SAM-RBF kernel (0.8561) is 1.61 % , 1.32 % , and 1.23 % higher than that of the RBF kernel on the Indian Pines, University of Pavia, and Salinas Valley datasets, respectively. We present three conclusions. First, the superiority of the Power-SAM-RBF kernel compared to other kernels is evident. Second, the Power-SAM-RBF kernel can provide an outstanding performance when the similarity between spectral signatures in the same hyperspectral dataset is either extremely high or extremely low. Third, the Power-SAM-RBF kernel provides even greater benefits compared to other commonly used kernels when the sizes of the training sets increase. In future work, multiple kernels combining with the spectral-similarity-based kernel are expected to be provide better hyperspectral classification.