Supervised classification for hyperspectral imaging in UAV maritime target detection

This paper addresses the use of a hyperspectral image system to detect vessels in maritime operational scenarios. The developed hyperspectral imaging classification methods are based on supervised approaches and allow to detect the presence of vessels using real hyperspectral data. We implemented two different methods for comparison purposes: SVM and SAM. The SVM method, which can be considered one of most utilized methods for image classification, was implemented using linear, RBF, sigmoid and polynomial kernels with PCA for dimensionality reduction, and compared with SAM using a two classes definition, namely vessel and water. The obtained results using real data collected from a UAV allow to conclude that the SVM approach is suitable for detecting the vessel presence in the water with a precision and recall rates favorable when compared to SAM.