Change Detection Using Global and Local Multifractal Description

In this letter, we apply the multifractal formalism to land cover change detection on very high spatial resolution data. Specifically, multifractal spectra are determined and, with modifications, are used as an initial general indicator of change on the subsets of IKONOS and Pleiades images. Next, we calculate Holder exponents for each pixel in the images and use them to generate a change mask. Our analysis shows that Holder exponents enable a detailed evaluation of changes in land cover. A comparison with change detection based solely on panchromatic images shows that the multifractal description method has significant advantages as it reduces the number of false positives. In addition, we show that our change detection results are comparable with other multiscale techniques.