Advances in Hyperspectral Image Processing Techniques

2Overview of Hyperspectral Imaging Remote Sensing from Satellites

Shen‐En Qian

Canadian Space Agency, Saint‐Hubert, Quebec, Canada

2.1 Hyperspectral Imaging Remote Sensing from Airplanes to Satellites

Hyperspectral satellites have emerged as a new generation of remote sensing satellites since the beginning of this millennium. Compared to multispectral satellites, such as Landsat and SPOT satellites, the primary advantage of hyperspectral satellites is that, because an entire spectrum is acquired for each pixel in the scene of the acquired imagery, an operator needs no prior knowledge of the pixels, and post‐processing allows all available information from the dataset to be exploited [1]. Hyperspectral imagery can provide direct identification and analysis of the surface materials. Hyperspectral imaging can also take advantage of the spatial relationships among the different pixel spectra in a neighborhood, allowing more elaborate spectral‐spatial models for a more accurate segmentation and classification of the image [2]. Hyperspectral imagery has been used in a wide range of remote sensing applications, including geology, agriculture, forestry, environment, ocean, atmosphere, climate change, defense and security, and law enforcement. The fascinating detailed spectral information provided by hyperspectral imagery often provides results not possible with multispectral or other types of imagery [3].

Goetz et al. [4] originally defined hyperspectral imaging as “the acquisition ...