Kernel-based regularized-angle spectral matching for target detection in hyperspectral imagery

Target detection is one of the most important applications of hyperspectral imagery in the field of both civilian and military. In this letter, we firstly propose a new spectral matching method for target detection in hyperspectral imagery, which utilizes a pre-whitening procedure and defines a regularized spectral angle between the spectra of the test sample and the targets. The regularized spectral angle, which possesses explicit geometric sense in multidimensional spectral vector space, indicates a measure to make the target detection more effective. Furthermore Kernel realization of the Angle-Regularized Spectral Matching (KAR-SM, based on kernel mapping) improves detection even more. To demonstrate the detection performance of the proposed method and its kernel version, experiments are conducted on real hyperspectral images. The experimental tests show that the proposed detector outperforms the conventional spectral matched filter and its kernel version.

Research highlights
► ARSM method possesses good flexibility for hyperspectral target detection.
► Kernel ARSM is able to effectively process high-dimensional hyperspectral data.
► Kernel ARSM outperforms existing kernel spectral matching filter for detection.