Exploiting Superpixel-Based Contextual Information on Active Learning for High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing Image Classification

Superpixel-based classification using Active Learning (AL) has shown great potential in high spatial resolution remote sensing image classification tasks. However, in existing superpixel-based classification models using AL, the expert labeling information is only used on the selected informative superpixel while its neighboring superpixels are ignored. Actually, as most superpixels are over-segmented, a ground object always contains multiple superpixels. Thus, the center superpixel tends to have the same label as its neighboring superpixels. In this paper, to make full use of the expert labeling information, a Similar Neighboring Superpixels Search and Labeling (SNSSL) method was proposed and used in the AL process. Firstly, we identify superpixels with certain categories and uncertain superpixels by supervised learning. Secondly, we use the active learning method to process those uncertain superpixels. In each round of AL, the expert labeling information is not only used to enrich the training set but also used to label the similar neighboring superpixels. Similar neighboring superpixels are determined by computing the similarity of two superpixels according to CIELAB Dominant Colors distance, Correlation distance, Angular Second Moment distance and Contrast distance. The final classification map is composed of the supervised learning classification map and the active learning with SNSSL classification map. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed SNSSL method, the experiments were conducted on images from two benchmark high spatial resolution remote sensing datasets. The experiment shows that overall accuracy, average accuracy and kappa coefficients of the classification using the SNSSL have been improved obviously compared with the classification without the SNSSL.

Automated summary

Superpixel-based classification using Active Learning (AL) has shown great potential in high spatial resolution remote sensing image classification tasks. However, in existing models, the neighboring superpixels are ignored and only the selected informative superpixel is labeled. This paper proposes a Similar Neighboring Superpixels Search and Labeling (SNSSL) method to fully utilize the expert labeling information and improve the classification accuracy.