Title: Bayesian Nonparametric Unmixing of Hyperspectral Images,
Abstract: Hyperspectral imaging is an important tool in remote sensing, allowing for
accurate analysis of vast areas. Due to a low spatial resolution, a pixel of a
hyperspectral image rarely represents a single material, but rather a mixture
of different spectra. HSU aims at estimating the pure spectra present in the
scene of interest, referred to as endmembers, and their fractions in each
pixel, referred to as abundances. Today, many HSU algorithms have been
proposed, based either on a geometrical or statistical model. While most
methods assume that the number of endmembers present in the scene is known,
there is only little work about estimating this number from the observed data.
In this work, we propose a Bayesian nonparametric framework that jointly
estimates the number of endmembers, the endmembers itself, and their
abundances, by making use of the Indian Buffet Process as a prior for the
endmembers. Simulation results and experiments on real data demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, yielding results comparable with
state-of-the-art methods while being able to reliably infer the number of
endmembers. In scenarios with strong noise, where other algorithms provide only
poor results, the proposed approach tends to overestimate the number of
endmembers slightly. The additional endmembers, however, often simply represent
noisy replicas of present endmembers and could easily be merged in a
post-processing step.