Classification of multi-source images using color morphological profiles

In the remote sensing domain data from many different sources are often available. Each of these data sources are characterized by their own sensor- and platform-specific properties, i.e. spectral range, or spatial and spectral resolution. In this paper we consider a low spatial, but high spectral resolution satellite image, together with its high spatial resolution RGB color image, e.g. obtained by UAV. Spatial features are extracted from the color image by combining the three color bands R, G and B, ordering these color vectors, and presenting color mathematical morphological profiles accordingly. This way the spatial information contained in the correlation between the different bands is completely taken into account and thus also totally preserved in the feature extraction. In a classification experiment these color morphological profiles are combined with the spectral features of the hyperspectral image, and we show that the spatial characterization of the color image is improved.