Quantitative evaluation of hyperspectral data compressed by near lossless onboard compression techniques

The Canadian Space Agency is investigating an onboard compressor for a hyperspectral satellite using its two innovative data compression techniques. It is essential to verify the quality of the compressed data and users´ acceptability in terms of their remote sensing applications. Hyperspectral data cubes acquired by hyperspectral sensors such as casi, AVIRIS, Probe-1 and Hyperion were tested. Statistical hypothesis tests were used to assess if the means and variances in each spectral band of specified zones calculated from the reconstructed data cubes are significantly different from those calculated from the original data cube. Remote sensing end products, such as red edge, chlorophyll content and spectral unmixing were used to evaluate the compressed data. Preliminary test results show that hyperspectral data compressed using the two compression techniques at compression ratio up to 30:1 are acceptable in terms of statistical tests and remote sensing end products.