We give updates on a persistent imaging experiment dataset, being considered for public release in a foreseeable future, and present additional observations analyzing a subset of the dataset. The experiment is a long-term collaborative effort among the Army Research Laboratory, Army Armament RDEC, and Air Force Institute of Technology that focuses on the collection and exploitation of longwave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imagery. We emphasize the inherent challenges associated with using remotely sensed LWIR hyperspectral imagery for material recognition, and show that this data type violates key data assumptions conventionally used in the scientific community to develop detection/ID algorithms, i.e., normality, independence, identical distribution. We treat LWIR hyperspectral imagery as Longitudinal Data and aim at proposing a more realistic framework for material recognition as a function of spectral evolution through time, and discuss limitations. The defining characteristic of a longitudinal study is that objects are measured repeatedly through time and, as a result, data are dependent. This is in contrast to cross-sectional studies in which the outcomes of a specific event are observed by randomly sampling from a large population of relevant objects in which data are assumed independent. Researchers in the remote sensing community generally assume the problem of object recognition to be cross-sectional. But through a longitudinal analysis of a fixed site with multiple material types, we quantify and argue that, as data evolve through a full diurnal cycle, pattern recognition problems are longitudinal in nature and that by applying this knowledge may lead to better algorithms.

Date Published: 21 May 2015
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 9472, Algorithms and Technologies for Multispectral, Hyperspectral, and Ultraspectral Imagery XXI, 947204 (21 May 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2177425

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9472:
Algorithms and Technologies for Multispectral, Hyperspectral, and Ultraspectral Imagery XXI
Miguel Velez-Reyes; Fred A. Kruse, Editor(s)