A novel graph-based multiple kernel learning framework for hyperspectral image classification

Multiple kernel learning (MKL) is an efficient way to improve hyperspectral image classification with few training samples by integrating spectral and spatial features. Nonetheless, presenting a MKL algorithm to capture significant information and eliminate redundancy is indispensable. In this paper, a novel graph-based MKL method (GMKL) is introduced to enhance the performance of the MKL algorithm and achieve high discriminative features, resulting in maximum separability. To do so, an informative low-rank graph is determined via a new algorithm called block diagonal representation that takes into account both local and global data structures. Then, in lieu of a time-consuming search for finding the optimal combination of the basic kernels, unlike the prior works, an optimal projective direction is acquired using graph theory. Various basic kernels generated from superpixels and attribute profiles are projected to produce a discriminative combination of kernels. Eventually, the optimum kernel is given to the support vector machine classifier. Experiments have been conducted on two popular hyperspectral datasets (Indian Pines and Pavia University). For the datasets, the proposed algorithm gained 90.43% and 99.28% overall accuracy, respectively, using only 1% training samples, which is much better than the state-of-the-art MKL algorithm and deep learning-based approaches with lower computational time.