ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246 – 256

www.elsevier.com/locate/isprsjprs

Hyperspectral edge filtering for measuring homogeneity

of surface cover types
W.H. Bakker *, K.S. Schmidt
International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC), Hengelosestraat 99, P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands

Received 22 June 2001; accepted 9 April 2002

Abstract

Edge operators are widely used on grey-level images as a first step in image segmentation or image interpretation. Methods
that are currently used for edge filtering are complex and only valid under certain conditions, or useful for three-band colour
images only. The problem remains on how to apply edge filtering on multispectral or even hyperspectral images. This paper
presents a method that can be used for multispectral and hyperspectral edge filtering. The method uses filtering techniques in
combination with three distance measures, namely the Euclidean distance, the spectrum intensity difference, or the spectral
angle. The same hyperspectral edge filters serve as homogeneity measures. By simply ‘plugging in’ another distance measure in
the same filter, a separation between intensity and spectral content is achieved, which makes the hyperspectral edge filters the
natural extension of colour edge filters. The hyperspectral edge filters use information from all spectral bands to arrive at a
(dis)similarity map in one step. The edge filters were tested on HyMap hyperspectral imagery of the island of Schiermonnikoog.
The test area includes agriculture and a saltmarsh. Experimental results are presented. The spectral angle (dis)similarity of
neighbouring pixels can be directly compared with spectral angles already obtained by using the Spectral Angle Mapper for
classification. We show that these hyperspectral edge filters assist image interpretation, even in heterogeneous ecosystems such
as saltmarshes. D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Edge filter; Image filtering; Spectral intensity; Spectral angle; Euclidean distance; Hyperspectral images

1. Introduction wrongly influenced by outliers, which can be pre-

Analysis of remote sensing imagery often aims at
the detection of homogeneous surface cover of known
type. These homogeneous patches of land are detected
by image classification and accuracy can be enhanced
by edge detection (Kettig and Landgrebe, 1976; Ryd-
berg and Borgefors, 2001). Class statistics can be
* can be measured by using edge filters; high values
Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-53-4874-566; fax: +31-53-
4874-400.
E-mail addresses: bakker@itc.nl (W.H. Bakker),
schmidt@itc.nl (K.S. Schmidt).
vented by ensuring that pixels used for supervised
classification are obtained from homogeneous areas,
i.e. those areas giving a low response to an edge
operator.
In fact, the need for the edge operators described
here originated from the need to have a measure for
local homogeneity in the image. Homogeneity, of
course, is the reverse of variability, thus homogeneity
identify edges, while low values indicate local homo-
geneity. This paper develops a measure of local
spectral variability in hyperspectral images.

0924-2716/02/$ - see front matter D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 2 7 1 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 6 0 - 6
 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256
Remote sensing and image processing have a long
history going back to the 1960s when the first mono-
chrome pictures where returned by the first satellites,
and the first computers had enough power to perform
operations on images. Today, the first civil hyper-
spectral earth observation satellite is up in space.
Earth Observing-1 was launched on the 21st of
November 2000 and has two hyperspectral sensors
on board that measure contiguous spectra with spec-
tral resolution of 10 nm and less. In addition, desktop
computers are powerful enough to allow fast process-
ing of gigabytes of hyperspectral datasets.
Pixels of multispectral and hyperspectral images
are arranged in the image space and can be viewed in
spectral space or in feature space (Landgrebe, 1999).
Whereas in spectral space, the pixel bands are repre-
sented as a spectral curve with wavelength on the x-
axis and radiance or reactance on the y-axis, in feature
space, each pixel can be seen as a vector of n
dimensions with the spectral response of the bands
determining the length and direction. In remote sens-
ing, the n-dimensional feature space forms the basis of
many image classification algorithms, e.g. maximum
likelihood classification or spectral angle mapping.
When using three bands, image pixels can be
represented in colour space. Depending on which
measurements are used for the three bands, many
different types of colour spaces exist (Wyszecki and
Stiles, 1982). Examples are the RGB (red, green, blue)
colour space, the HSI (hue, saturation, intensity)
colour space, and the CIE-LUV colour space (where
L is the luminance coordinate; and U and V are the
chromaticity coordinates), also called the perceptual
uniform colour space as defined by the International
Commission on Illumination (CIE).
2. Edge filters
Edge detection is based upon the detection of local
variations which mainly correspond to the boundaries
of homogeneous objects in the image. An edge, also
known as a discontinuity, in a signal is usually defined
as a transition in the intensity or amplitude of that
signal. Edge filtering for image analysis is an
extended field of image processing and many
approaches exist, most of which aim to find a measure
of strength and direction of gradient in the image
247
characteristics and then, by applying a fixed or
dynamic threshold, to define edges (Zhu et al., 1999).
Edge filters are readily available in most software
packages. The result of these edge operators are used
in machine vision for line extraction and automatic
target recognition; and also in environmental applica-
tions for texture analysis, noise reduction, image
segmentation (Kettig and Landgrebe, 1976; Biswas
and Nikhil, 2000; Rydberg and Borgefors, 2001), and
image interpretation. This paper focuses on the envi-
ronmental applications of measuring local spectral
variability.
Many filters can be used on a single band only. The
simplest edge filters look at the difference or gradient
between two or more pixels in a 3
3 neighbour-
hood. Furthermore, gradient filters are usually com-
bined with averaging because the difference operators
tend to enhance noise. Lee and Cok (1991) use
prefiltering.
Commonly used simple edge operators are the
Laplace operator and the Sobel operator (Gonzales
and Wintz, 1977). Only the Laplace operator will be
used in this paper to illustrate the line of thought for
creating hyperspectral edge filters, but also a hyper-
spectral Sobel filter was built by using the same
principle.
2.1. The modified Laplace operator
First, a modified Laplace operator that led to the
development of the hyperspectral edge filter will be
discussed.
Consider a 3
3 neighbourhood of pixels, where i
and j denote image coordinates
vi1;j1 vi;j1 viþ1;j1
vi1;j vi;j viþ1;j
vi1;jþ1 vi;jþ1 viþ1;jþ1
The Laplace operator is a linear convolution filter
with the following kernel
2 3
0 1 0
6 7
6 7
6 1 4 1 7
6 7
4 5
0 1 0
248 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256

For a Laplace operator, the formula for the pixel ei,j of Although methods for colour and multispectral
the resulting edge map can be written as edge filtering and edge detection have been proposed,
these methods are rather complex (Cumani, 1991;
1
ei;j ¼ ð4vi;j  vi;j1  vi1;j  viþ1;j  vi;jþ1 Þ ð1Þ Koschan, 1995), are only valid under certain condi-
4 tions (Drewniok, 1994), or are only used for three-
Eq. (1) can be rewritten as band colour images (Trahanias and Venetsanopoulos,
1996; Ruzon and Tomasi, 1999). Cumani (1991),
1 Koschan (1995), and Krishnamoorthi and Bhatta-
ei;j ¼ ððvi;j  vi;j1 Þ þ ðvi;j  vi1;j Þ
4 charya (1998) use zero-crossings in the second direc-
þ ðvi;j  viþ1;j Þ þ ðvi;j  vi;jþ1 ÞÞ ð2Þ tional derivative of colour images as two-dimensional
vector fields. Drewniok (1994) uses gradients and
Eq. (2) can be understood as the average of four spectral redundancy on Landsat images. Trahanias
differences. The next step is to take the absolute and Venetsanopoulos (1996) use vector ordering
differences methods for colour edge detection. Ruzon and Tomasi
(1999) use a compass operator for colour edge detec-
1 tion and Fan et al. (2001) call their directional filter
ei;j ¼ ðAvi;j  vi;j1 A þ Avi;j  vi1;j A
4 isotropic colour edge detection. Lee and Cok (1991)
þ Avi;j  viþ1;j A þ Avi;j  vi;jþ1 AÞ ð3Þ use the derivatives of a vector field.
None of the methods proposed by these authors is
Thereby, the direction of the change, plus or minus, used in the major software packages for processing
is lost and only the magnitude of the changes are remote sensing images, whereas the components to
taken into account in Eq. (3). The advantage is that the methods proposed in this paper are.
differences are not neutralised in the summation. This Fan et al. (2001) states that there are two categories
is not a Laplacian operator anymore, but rather an of edge detectors: gradient operators and second
operator that records fluctuations within the 3
3 derivative operators. A third category is presented
neighbourhood. Therefore, local ‘‘busyness’’ operator here that is based on distance measures. Zhu et al.
(Dondes and Rosenfeld, 1982) would be a suitable (1999) did an extensive comparison of edge detection
name for it. methods for colour image processing and concluded
One solution for images with more than one band that difference vector operators are extremely effec-
is to apply such an operator on all bands, producing a tive from the point of view of computational aspects
result that contains as many bands as the input image, and demonstrate excellent performance.
which would have to be combined to form one final Wesolkowski and Jernigan (1999) and Wesolkow-
result (Fig. 1). There are several methods to combine ski (1999) use vector metrics like the Euclidean
multiple edge maps, e.g. Rydberg and Borgefors distance and vector angle for edge detection in the
(2001), called fusion rules (Fan et al., 2001). The RGB and CIE-LUV colour spaces. Here, it will be
hyperspectral edge filters presented here do not need a shown that the methods they use can be extended to
fusion rule, because they operate on vectors instead of more bands and give good results for hyperspectral
bands. images.

Fig. 1. Edge filtering (denoted by the minus sign) on bands followed by a fusion rule (denoted by a plus sign).
 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256
Fig. 2. Hyperspectral edge filtering (denoted by the minus sign).
The discussion below will show difference meas-
ures that use information from all spectral bands to
arrive at an edge map with one single band in one step
as depicted in Fig. 2.
3. Distance measures
Many distance measures may be applied in Eq. (3).
One might think of using the Lm distance class (Cor-
men et al., 1990):
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
!! X n
Lm ð v; wÞ ¼
m
Awk  vk Am
k¼1
where n is the dimension of the feature space and m is
the parameter that determines the degree of the
particular distance measure.
Three special cases can be identified. The Manhat-
tan distance, L1, measures the distance between two
points along axes at right angles, L2 is the Euclidean
distance, and Ll takes the maximum component.
3.1. Euclidean distance
The most obvious method is to calculate the
! !
Euclidean distance (ED) (Fig. 3) between v and w,
! !
or the norm N: : : N of the difference vector w  v:
!! ! !
EDð v; wÞ ¼ N w  vN
The Euclidean distance measure may be dominated
by the intensity component, i.e. the length of the
vectors. Therefore, it is worthwhile to look at the
intensity and spectral components separately. This is
entirely in analogy with the strict separation of the
249
intensity and the chromaticity coordinates in various
colour spaces.
3.2. Intensity difference
The intensity difference (ID) can be calculated by
!
taking the absolute difference in length (Fig. 3) of v
!
and w
!! ! !
IDð v; wÞ ¼ _ wN  N v_ ð5Þ
! !
The values N vN and N wN represent the intensity
of the two pixels. Note that the intensities of the two
pixels are independent of the orientation in the feature
! !
space of the vectors v and w (Fig. 3).
Thus, all additional spectral information, i.e. on the
shape of the spectral curve, is disregarded, and it was
shown that 10% of the edges present in colour images
remain undetected if only the intensity is used (Fan et
al., 2001). Also in the human visual system, colour
ð4Þ
Fig. 3. The feature space. Here, a two-dimensional space is spanned
up by two bands, band 1 and band 2. The two spectra of two pixels
! !
are represented by the two vectors v and w.
250 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256

plays a significant role in the perception of edges (Zhu ponents (HS or UV), while the Euclidean distance (ED)
et al., 1999). measure combines the two in one measure.
Edge filters determine edges by identifying differ-
3.3. Spectral angle ences between neighbouring pixels. We showed that
the idea of ‘‘difference’’ can easily be extended to
!
The vector angle a (Fig. 3) between pixels v and multi-band and even hyperspectral images. The prime
!
w of hyperspectral data is known as the angular idea is to use differences between spectral observa-
separation (McMurtry et al., 1974) or the spectral tions as the useful measure for dissimilarity. The
angle (Kruse et al., 1993). vector difference measures discussed in Section 3
The spectral angle (SA) between two pixel vectors can do exactly that.
! !
(Fig. 3) can be calculated using the dot product v  w In the following section, the spectral angle (SA)
! !
of the vectors v and w will be used to illustrate the combination of ‘‘busy-
ness’’ filter with a multidimensional distance measure.
! ! ! Furthermore, the spectral angle (SA) can directly be
!! v w
SAð v; wÞ ¼ cos1 ! ! ð6Þ replaced by Euclidean distance (ED) and intensity
N vN N wN
difference (ID) mentioned earlier to arrive at similar
filters having slightly different properties, which will
The interesting property of the spectral angle is that be discussed in Section 5.
the cosine of the angle is equivalent to the correlation
!
coefficient (CC) (Hadley, 1961) of the observations v
!
and w 4. Hyperspectral edge filter
Xn
vk wk
!! k¼1 !! By substituting the scalar absolute differences
cosðSAð v; wÞÞ ¼ sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffisffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ¼ CCð v; wÞ between neighbouring pixels in Eq. (3) with the
Xn Xn
v2k w2k spectral angle (SA) between equivalent neighbours
k¼1 k¼1 of a hyperspectral or multispectral image, we get

This means that the spectral angle is a statistical 1 ! ! ! !

method for expressing similarity or dissimilarity
! !
between two pixel vectors v and w. Note that the
spectral angle is independent of the length of the two
vectors, which means that all the intensity information
is lost.
Effectively, the spectral angle normalises the image
data. The main advantage of normalisation is that the
spectral angle is insensitive to topographic influences
(Schowengerdt, 1997). Zamudio and Atkinson (1990)
observe that normalisation removes albedo variations
and topographic effects. Also Zhu et al. (1999)
observe that colour edge detection outperforms mono-
chrome edge detection in low contrast images.
The three basic difference measures mentioned
above allow a generalisation of the three-dimensional
colour spaces (i.e. HSI and CIE-LUV) to the n-dimen-
sional spectral feature space. In the special case of
three-band colour images, the intensity difference (ID)
would only consider the intensity (I or L), the spectral
angle (SA) would only consider the chromaticity com-
ei;j ¼ ðSAð vi;j ; vi;j1 Þ þ SAð vi;j ; vi1;j Þ
4
! ! ! !
þ SAð vi;j ; viþ1;j Þ þ SAð vi;j ; vi;jþ1 ÞÞ ð7Þ
Similarly, any other difference measure can be sub-
stituted in Eq. (3).
However, the original Laplace operator has some
problems. Because of the shape, the original Laplace
operator, under certain conditions, creates visible
plus-shaped artifacts in the image. Furthermore, the
operator is only sensitive for north – south and east –
west gradients, not for diagonal gradients. To decrease
these problems, a weighted combination of the orig-
inal Laplace operator with its diagonal counterpart
was used in the final operator. The original Laplace
operator gets a weight of 2, and the diagonal Laplace
operator gets a weight of 1. The result is a smoother,
omnidirectionally sensitive operator. With this partic-
ular choice of weights, the operator hardly creates any
visible artifacts in the resulting image. The omnidirec-
 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256 251

Fig. 4. The false colour composite of Schiermonnikoog, using red (731 nm), green (702 nm), and blue (671 nm) bands. Displayed with a 2%
cut-off at each histogram end and linear stretch in between. Numbered image features are discussed in Section 5.

tional Laplace operator is analogous to the linear Finally, the resulting hyperspectral edge operator,
convolution filter kernel constructed as follows using the spectral angle (SA) and the omnidirectional
2 3 2 3 weight factors, can be written as
0 1 0 1 0 1
6 7 6 7
6 7 6 7 1 ! ! ! !
6 7 6 7 ei;j ¼ ðSAð vi1;j1 ; vi;j Þ þ 2SAð vi;j1 ; vi;j Þ
266 1 4 1 7þ6 0 4 0 7
7 6 7 12
6 7 6 7 ! ! ! !
4 5 4 5
þ SAð viþ1;j1 ; vi;j Þ þ 2SAð vi1;j ; vi;j Þ
0 1 0 1 0 1
2 3 ! ! ! !
1 2 1 þ 2SAð viþ1;j ; vi;j Þ þ SAð vi1;jþ1 ; vi;j Þ
6 7 ! ! ! !
6 7 þ 2SAð vi;jþ1 ; vi;j Þ þ SAð viþ1;jþ1 ; vi;j ÞÞ ð9Þ
6 7
¼ 6 2 12 2 7
6
7 ð8Þ
6 7 !
4 5
where the central pixel is vi;j, and the total is divided
1 2 1 by 12, which is the number of differences (SA) used.
252 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256
It should be noted that this particular choice of
weight factors is not essential for the principle of
hyperspectral edge filters, and other filter weights may
prove to be useful as well. However, there are a
number of reasons why this particular choice of Eq.
(9) is convenient. Eq. (9) considers all the differences
of the central pixel with its eight surrounding pixels.
The closest pixels are weighted more heavily than the
pixels in the corners, which is very much in accord-
ance with the spatial autocorrelation principle of
images (in this case, a reciprocal squared distance
relation is assumed). The nice property of this oper-
ator is that the resulting numbers express the weighted
!
average local spectral angle of the central pixel vi;j to
its eight neighbours. If the spectral angle is used for
classification, then the numbers obtained by the SA
edge filter immediately have a meaning and can be
integrated in further analysis, which will be discussed
Fig. 5. Hyperspectral edge detection using intensity difference, (ID). Displayed with a 2% cut-off at each histogram end and linear stretch in
between. Numbered image features are discussed in Section 5.
in Section 5, where the hyperspectral edge filters were
applied in an environmental application.
5. Experiments and results
The hyperspectral Laplace edge operator, using SA
according to Eq. (9), and its counterparts using ID and
ED, were applied to part of an airborne hyperspectral
image (HyMap; Intspec, 2002) acquired over Schier-
monnikoog, an island located at the northernmost part
of the Netherlands (Fig. 4 shows a false colour
composite; the 731, 702 and 671 nm bands are shown
in red, green and blue). The HyMap scanner produces
images with 128 bands across the spectral range of
400 – 2500 nm.
Since 1989, most of the island of Schiermonnikoog
is a national park, preserving a saltmarsh ecosystem.
 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256
Schiermonnikoog is well studied in terms of the
ecology of saltmarshes and their importance for
migrating birds, and nitrogen cycling (Bakker,
1989). Fig. 4 shows agricultural fields used for
intensive grazing on the left. The fields are cultivated
with grass, and frequently mowed, or ploughed. There
are three homesteads among the fields with buildings
and trees. The fields are protected by an artificial dyke
from the Wadden Sea towards the south and east, and
by natural dunes to the north. The fields are drained
by straight water channels. On the eastern side of the
dyke is the saltmarsh with the mudflats to the south,
going northwards from low, middle, to high saltmarsh,
before reaching the natural dunes. Vegetation on the
saltmarsh consists of low grasses and herbs, and on
the dunes grow some shrubs. The typical saltmarsh
landscape, creeks and small depressions, which are
formed and influenced by the tides, can be distin-
Fig. 6. Hyperspectral edge detection using spectral angle (SA). Displayed with a 2% cut-off at each histogram end and linear stretch in-between.
Numbered image features are discussed in Section 5.
253
guished. The leftmost of the three water bodies in the
upper left corner of Fig. 4 is surrounded by an
artificial ridge covered with trees.
We discuss the difference between the three hyper-
spectral edge filters, referring to the numbers in the
example of part of Schiermonnikoog (Figs. 4 –7).
(1) Bare soil. The ID edge filter distinguishes
brightness patches in the bare soil of the ploughed
field, which the SA edge filter ignores. The ED edge
filter takes over the brightness differences of the bare
soil.
(2) Pan. The SA edge filter distinguishes the edge of
the nonvegetated depression in the saltmarsh, whereas
the edge between vegetation and bare soil of that pan is
not identified by the ID edge filter. The strength of the
edge is slightly reduced in the ED edge filter.
(3) Open water. The open water to vegetation edge
is clear in all three edge filter, but the SA edge filter
254 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256
Fig. 7. Hyperspectral edge detection using Euclidean distance, (ED). Displayed with a 2% cut-off at each histogram end and linear stretch in-
between. Numbered image features are discussed in Section 5.
does identify the edge between clear deep water and
water containing chlorophyll towards the edges of the
pond, as can be deduced by looking at the spectra.
(4) Creek. The creeks in the saltmarsh are well
identified by all edge filters, with slightly better
identification of the increasingly narrow creek-lines
with the ID edge filter.
(5) Erosion cliff. The border between the lower
saltmarsh and intertidal flat, which is in this area
enhanced by a small erosion cliff, is most clearly
visible in the SA edge filter image.
(6) Different percent vegetation cover. The SA
edge filter identifies from right to left: the drainage
channel, the border between bare field and cut field,
and the edge between cut field and high grass field.
The ID edge filter only sees the edge of high biomass
low biomass, but the change in intensity between bare
soil and low vegetation cover is too small to be
detected.
(7) Shrubby dune. The shrubs on the dunes are
casting shadows which come out in the ID edge filter
as bright spots of high dissimilarity, whereas the SA
edge filter identifies the edge between shrubby vege-
tation and grassy vegetation as discontinuous lines.
(8) Saltmarsh/dune. The ID edge filter shows
some faint lines at the borders of low to middle
saltmarsh and high saltmarsh to dune, which are
most probably differences in soil wetness and tex-
ture. These edges are not identified by the SA edge
filter.
(9) Path. The shell-paths are most clearly defined
with the SA edge filter.
(10) Shadow. The shadow of the trees make the ID
edge filter show bright lines and pixels, whereas the
 W.H. Bakker, K.S. Schmidt / ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing 56 (2002) 246–256
SA edge filter rather identifies the difference of
vegetation type tree to grass as light grey lines. The
ED edge filter is also influenced by the shadow.
In summary, there are several advantages for all
three edge filters: The SA edge filter clearly identifies
vegetated against nonvegetated edges, and sharp
edges of difference in cover type including the pres-
ence of chlorophyll in water. This means that paths
through vegetation, the edge of the vegetated salt-
marsh, sharp edges of shrubby vegetation against
grassland, and difference in cover between agricul-
tural fields are well distinguished with the SA hyper-
spectral edge filter.
The main interest in this case is vegetation cover
and it was found that areas with an average spectral
angle below a certain level (e.g. an angle of 0.04) can
be considered ‘‘homogeneous’’. The major advantage
is that this number can be immediately compared with
spectral angles already obtained by using the Spectral
Angle Mapper for classification.
The ID edge filter, while still identifying edges of
vegetation to water, is not so good in distinguishing
vegetation from bare soil or paths. The reason is that,
over vegetation, the high reactance in the near infrared
compensates for the low reactance in the visible in the
intensity measure. The ID edge filter is triggered by
brightness differences in the same cover type, such as
bare soil with different soil texture and water content
and tree shadows.
The ED edge filter is a combination of the intensity
and the spectral angle filter and has their advantages,
but also their disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage
is that it is triggered by tree shadows.
6. Conclusion
A new class of edge operators based on existing
methods for expressing spectral difference as well as
traditional filtering methods was described. The com-
bination proved to give an elegant and powerful tool
that immediately showed its usefulness in the analysis
and interpretation of hyperspectral images.
By simply ‘plugging in’ another distance measure
in the same filter, a separation between intensity and
spectral content is achieved, which make the hyper-
spectral edge filters the natural extension of colour
edge filters.
255
The hyperspectral edge filters using the ED dis-
tance measure is in fact a combination measure of the
edge filters using the ID and the SA distance meas-
ures. That means all features more or less detected in
the ID and the SA edge filter are also present in the
ED edge filter, and edges that are stronger in one and
absent or weak in the other have a response in the ED
edge filter that lies somewhere between.
The method using the spectral angle (SA) as a
vector difference measure gave the best overall results
when detecting homogeneity of vegetated surfaces, or
conversely boundaries of natural cover types. The
spectral angle (dis)similarity of neighbouring pixels
can be directly compared with spectral angles already
obtained by using the Spectral Angle Mapper for
classification.
In situations where differences in brightness and
intensity are important, the intensity difference (ID) is
the best choice.
This paper shows that the combination of vector
(dis)similarity measures with filtering techniques
leads to an interesting new class of filters, which
can be used for multispectral and hyperspectral
images to detect edges as well as measure local
homogeneity.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Prof. A.K. Skidmore for
kindly allowing the use of the HyMap data of
Schiermonnikoog.
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