Abstract
The problem of hyperspectral remote sensing images classification is revisited by posterior probability support vector machines (PPSVMs). To address the multiclass classification problem, PPSVMs are extended using binary tree structure and boosting with the Fisher ratio as class separability measure. The class pair with larger Fisher ratio separability measure is separated at upper nodes of the binary tree to optimize the structure of the tree and improve the classification accuracy. Two approaches are proposed to select the class pair and construct the binary tree. One is the so-called some-against-rest binary tree of PPSVMs (SBT), in which some classes are separated from the remaining classes at each node considering the Fisher ratio separability measure. For the other approach, named one-against-rest binary tree of PPSVMs (OBT), only one class is separated from the remaining classes at each node. Both approaches need only to train n - 1 (n is the number of classes) binary PPSVM classifiers, while the average convergence performance of SBT and OBT are O(log(2) n) and O[(n! - 1)/n], respectively. Experimental results show that both approaches obtain classification accuracy if not higher, at least comparable to other multiclass approaches, while using significantly fewer support vectors and reduced testing time. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3553800]