HZSCM: Hyperspectral Image Zero-Shot Classification via Vision-Language Models

Most hyperspectral image (HSI) classification methods assume that all classes in the test set are present during training. However, in real-world applications, acquiring labeled training samples is challenging. As a result, it is difficult for the training dataset to cover all possible land cover types, leading to the generalized zero-shot learning (GZSL) problem. Recently, vision-language models (VLMs) have provided rich semantic priors for land cover classes, offering promising potential for GZSL. However, two fundamental gaps hinder their application to HSI classification: the task paradigm gap, arising from the difference between image-level VLMs and the pixel-level HSI classification task; and the knowledge gap, due to the inconsistency between VLM features and HSI spectral–spatial representations. To bridge both gaps, a novel framework leveraging VLM semantic priors for GZSL in HSI classification is proposed, primarily using a pseudo-labeling technique to provide knowledge for unseen classes. Specifically, a pseudo-label generation and enhancement module enables a paradigm transition from image-level understanding to pixel-level classification by incorporating HSI’s spatial information. A pseudo-label correction module then refines noisy labels using spectral cues to address the knowledge gap. Finally, a global learning strategy integrates pseudo-label distillation, supervised learning, and feature regularization to classify seen classes while enabling generalization to unseen ones. Experiments on benchmark HSI datasets demonstrate the proposed method’s superiority in generalized zero-shot classification. This work highlights the potential of VLMs in advancing HSI classification in practical applications.