Support Vector Machine and Bhattacharrya kernel function for region based classification

Region based methods are indicated to classify image with strong heterogeneity, where only the spectral information is not enough. Different approaches have been proposed to perform this kind of classification. This study presents a new approach for region based classification that consists in use the Support Vector Machine (SVM) method with Bhattacharyya kernel function. A high resolution IKONOS image was classified. The classification results shows that SVM method using the Bhattacharyya kernel is better than Minimum Distance Classifier and conventional SVM.