Band selection of hyperspectral image by sparse manifold clustering

Band selection of hyperspectral images is an optimal feature selection method, which aims at reducing the computational burden associated with processing the whole data. The significant and informative bands identified by the band selection process lead to efficient, compact representation of the image data and produce a satisfactory performance in the succeeding applications viz. classification, unmixing, target detection and so on. In this study, the authors present an unsupervised manifold clustering approach for band selection, which accounts for different types of scenarios. Unlike other band selection approaches, the authors’ proposed manifold clustering framework identifies the informative bands by utilising the interrelation between the bands and accounts for the multi‐manifold structure prevalent in some real images. The proposed band selection framework identifies the optimal number of clusters by cluster validity index, clusters the bands by manifold clustering and select representative bands from each cluster according to graph weight. Their proposed manifold clustering approach is a generic clustering approach, which produces a satisfactory result even when the data contains non‐linearity. The information theoretic performance measures, classification and unmixing performance on real image experiments demonstrate the proficiency of their proposed band selection algorithm.