Fuzzy clustering algorithms incorporating local information for change detection in remotely sensed images

In this paper we have used two fuzzy clustering algorithms, namely fuzzy c-means (FCM) and Gustafson–Kessel clustering (GKC) along with local information for unsupervised change detection in multitemporal remote sensing images. In conventional FCM and GKC no spatio-contextual information is taken into account and thus the result is not so much robust to small changes. Since the pixels are highly correlated with their neighbors in image space (spatial domain), incorporation of local information enhances the performance of the algorithms. In this work we have introduced a new technique for incorporation of local information. Change detection maps are obtained by separating the pixel-patterns of the difference image into two groups. Hybridization of FCM and GKC with two other optimization techniques, genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing (SA), is made to further enhance the performance. To show the effectiveness of the proposed technique, experiments are conducted on two multispectral and multitemporal remote sensing images. Two fuzzy cluster validity measures (Xie–Beni and fuzzy hypervolume) have been used to quantitatively evaluate the performance. Results are compared with those of existing state of the art Markov random field (MRF) and neural network based algorithms and found to be superior. The proposed technique is less time consuming and unlike MRF does not require any a priori knowledge of distributions of changed and unchanged pixels.

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► Fuzzy clustering algorithms along with local information for unsupervised change detection are proposed.
► Overall error and cluster validity indices are used for quantitative evaluation.
► Results on remote sensing images show the potential of the proposed technique.