A Stochastic Minimum Spanning Forest approach for spectral-spatial classification of hyperspectral images

A new method for supervised hyperspectral data classification is proposed. In particular, the notion of Stochastic Minimum Spanning Forests (MSFs) is introduced. For a given hyper-spectral image, a pixelwise classification is first performed. From this classification map, M marker maps are generated by randomly selecting pixels and labeling them as markers for the construction of MSFs. The next step consists in building an MSF from each of the M marker maps. Finally, all the M realizations are aggregated with a maximum vote decision rule, resulting in a final classification map. The experimental results presented on an AVIRIS image of the vegetation area show that the proposed approach yields accurate classification maps, and thus is attractive for hyperspectral data analysis.