A projection pursuit algorithm for anomaly detection in hyperspectral imagery

The main goal of this paper is to propose an innovative technique for anomaly detection in hyperspectral imageries. This technique allows anomalies to be identified whose signatures are spectrally distinct from their surroundings, without any a priori knowledge of the target spectral signature. It is based on an one-dimensional projection pursuit with the Legendre index as the measure of interest. The index optimization is performed with a simulated annealing over a simplex in order to bypass local optima which could be sub-optimal in certain cases. It is argued that the proposed technique could be considered as seeking a projection to depart from the normal distribution, and unfolding the outliers as a consequence. The algorithm is tested with AHS and HYDICE hyperspectral imageries, where the results show the benefits of the approach in detecting a great variety of objects whose spectral signatures have sufficient deviation from the background. The technique proves to be automatic in the sense that there is no need for parameter tuning, giving meaningful results in all cases. Even objects of sub-pixel size, which cannot be made out by the human naked eye in the original image, can be detected as anomalies. Furthermore, a comparison between the proposed approach and the popular RX technique is given. The former outperforms the latter demonstrating its ability to reduce the proportion of false alarms.