Advances in Hyperspectral Image Processing Techniques

1Introduction: Two Fundamental Principles Behind Hyperspectral Imaging

Chein‐I Chang

Center for Hyperspectral Imaging in Remote Sensing (CHIRS), Information and Technology College, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China

Remote Sensing Signal and Image Processing Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA

1.1 Introduction

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) has been around more than 30 years since the first maiden flight made by airborne visible/infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS) in 1987 [1]. Due to its use of hundreds of contiguous spectral bands, HSI is capable of solving many issues that cannot be resolved by multispectral sensors which use only tens of discrete spectral bands. In particular, with very high spectral resolution provided by HSI, many subtle objects and material substances can be now uncovered and extracted by very narrow diagnostic bandwidths for detection, discrimination, classification, identification, recognition, and quantification including new applications still yet to be explored. Intuitively, many think that HSI is a natural extension to multispectral imaging (MSI). In fact, this is not true as discussed in [2, chapter 1] and will be also discussed in Sections 1.3 and 1.4 of this chapter. The early development of HSI arises from military applications where spatial domain information does not provide needed spectral information, generally referred to as nonliteral ...