Multitarget Multiple-Instance Learning for Hyperspectral Target Detection

In remote sensing, it is often challenging to acquire or collect a large data set that is accurately labeled. This difficulty is usually due to several issues, including but not limited to the study site’s spatial area and accessibility, errors in the global positioning system (GPS), and mixed pixels caused by an image’s spatial resolution. We propose an approach, with two variations, that estimates multiple-target signatures from training samples with imprecise labels: multitarget multiple-instance adaptive cosine estimator (MTMI-ACE) and multitarget multiple-instance spectral match filter (MTMI-SMF). The proposed methods address the abovementioned problems by directly considering the multiple-instance, imprecisely labeled data set. They learn a dictionary of target signatures that optimizes detection against a background using the adaptive cosine estimator (ACE) and spectral match filter (SMF). Experiments were conducted to test the proposed algorithms using a simulated hyperspectral data set, the MUUFL Gulfport hyperspectral data set collected over the University of Southern Mississippi–Gulfpark Campus, and the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) hyperspectral data set collected over Santa Barbara County, CA, USA. Both simulated and real hyperspectral target detection experiments show that the proposed algorithms are effective at learning target signatures and performing target detection.