Spatial Resolution Enhancement of Hyperspectral Images Using Unmixing and Binary Particle Swarm Optimization

Hyperspectral imaging provides high spectral resolution and thereby improved classification, detection, and recognition capabilities with respect to standard imaging systems. However, hyperspectral images generally have low spatial resolution, varying from a few to tens of meters, resulting from technical limitations such as platform data storing capacity and satellite-to-ground transmission bandwidth. Spectral unmixing provides information on pixels in terms of abundances of pure spectral signatures, without providing spatial distribution at subpixel level. Multisensor image fusion approaches can provide such information but require an additional image with higher spatial resolution that is acquired in similar conditions with the hyperspectral image. In this letter, a novel spatial resolution enhancement method using fully constrained least squares (FCLS) spectral unmixing and spatial regularization based on modified binary particle swarm optimization is proposed to achieve spatial resolution enhancement in hyperspectral images, without using an additional image with higher spatial resolution. The proposed method has a highly parallel nature with respect to its counterparts in the literature and is fit to be adapted to field-programmable gate array architecture.