Title
A Novel Hierarchical Clustering Technique Based on Splitting and Merging
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Version of Record
Publication Date
2015
Keywords
Landsat image, QuickBird image, hierarchical clustering, mean shift clustering, K-means clustering
Description
Amongst the multiple benefits and uses of remote sensing, one of the most important applications is to solve the problem of land-cover mapping. In this paper, unsupervised techniques are considered for land-cover mapping using multispectral satellite images. In unsupervised techniques, automatic generation of the number of clusters for huge databases has not been exploited to its full potential. To overcome that, a hierarchical clustering algorithm that uses splitting and merging techniques is proposed here. In the proposed method, a splitting method is initially used to search for the best possible number of clusters with a non-parametric estimation technique, i.e., mean shift clustering (MSC). For the obtained clusters, a merging method is used to group the data points based on a parametric method (k-means clustering algorithm). The performance of the proposed hierarchical clustering algorithm is compared with three previously proposed unsupervised algorithms, i.e., (1) parametric k-means clustering; (2) hybrid MSC and k-means clustering; (3) hybrid algorithm for cluster establishment (ACE) and k-means clustering. Two typical multispectral satellite images – a Landsat 7 thematic mapper image and a QuickBird image are used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed hierarchical clustering algorithm. A performance comparison of this proposed algorithm with the previously proposed algorithms is presented. From the obtained results, it is concluded that the proposed hierarchical clustering algorithm is both more accurate and more robust than the other compared algorithms.
Publication Title
International Journal of Image and Data Fusion
Volume
7
Issue
1
First Page
19
Last Page
41
DOI of Published Version
10.1080/19479832.2015.1053995
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Recommended Citation
Senthilnath, J.; Kumar, Deepak; benediktsson, J.A.; and Zhang, Xiaoyang, "A Novel Hierarchical Clustering Technique Based on Splitting and Merging" (2015). GSCE Faculty Publications. 19.
https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/gsce_pubs/19