Parallel Implementation of Spatial-Spectral Endmember Extraction on Graphic Processing Units

The identification of pure spectral signatures (end-members) in remotely sensed hyperspectral images has traditionally focused on the spectral information alone. Recently, techniques such as the spatial-spectral endmember extraction (SSEE) have incorporated both the spectral and the spatial information contained in the scene. Since hyperspectral images contain very detailed information in the spatial and spectral domain, the integration of these two sources of information generally comes with a significant increase in computational complexity. In this paper, we develop a new computationally efficient implementation of SSEE using commodity graphics processing units (GPUs). The relevance of GPUs comes from their very low cost, compact size, and the possibility to obtain significant acceleration factors by exploiting properly the GPU hardware architecture. Our experimental results, focused on evaluating the candidate endmembers produced by SSEE and also the computational performance of the GPU implementation, indicated significant acceleration factors that allow exploiting the SSEE method in computationally efficient fashion.