Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering

Recently, graph clustering has been applied to hyperspectral image (HSI) clustering and proves to be effective on capturing the complex affinity among hyperspectral samples to a certain extent. However, graph clustering based on sample-level affinity usually suffers from a heavy computation overhead...

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Main Authors: Yao Qin, Guisong Xia, Kun Li, Yuanxin Ye, Weiping Ni
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-08-01
Series:International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843225001487
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author Yao Qin
Guisong Xia
Kun Li
Yuanxin Ye
Weiping Ni
author_facet Yao Qin
Guisong Xia
Kun Li
Yuanxin Ye
Weiping Ni
author_sort Yao Qin
collection DOAJ
description Recently, graph clustering has been applied to hyperspectral image (HSI) clustering and proves to be effective on capturing the complex affinity among hyperspectral samples to a certain extent. However, graph clustering based on sample-level affinity usually suffers from a heavy computation overhead due to the generation of coefficient matrices. Meanwhile, since the spatial information of HSIs may not be sufficiently utilized in these methods, it is difficult for them to obtain robust clustering performance when processing various HSIs. In order to alleviate the negative effect of sample-level affinity, we achieve evolving superpixel-level affinity (ESA) by collaboratively integrating the sample-level contrastive learning (CL) for learning discriminative features with finding the inter-superpixel good neighbors (GN) of each sample. Initially, CL is operated based on the assumption of homogeneous superpixels to pull together samples from the same superpixel and the learned features are fed to the smooth representation model to pursue the representation coefficients that used for generating GN. Then, the superpixel-level affinity is updated by simply converting the similarity between samples in each pair of GN into the similarity of the corresponding superpixels. By combining the homogeneous assumption of superpixels with the updated superpixel-level affinity, further CL is achieved to acquire more GN. In this way, CL and generation of GN works collaboratively to evolutionarily solve the superpixel-level affinity. When the process finishes, density-based spectral clustering is first implemented on several affinity matrices selected by designed growth rate of Eigenvalues of normalized Laplacian matrix to obtain clustering results of superpixels. The superpixel-to-pixels projection is then applied to these results to gain clustering maps. Finally, the majority vote strategy is adopted to realize the final clustering. Comprehensive experiments on four benchmark HSIs demonstrate that the proposed ESA method is superior to the considered baseline counterparts in terms of clustering accuracy.
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spelling doaj-art-cd53a8909abc4d90877d8ce4936e9daa2025-08-20T03:39:36ZengElsevierInternational Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation1569-84322025-08-0114210450110.1016/j.jag.2025.104501Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clusteringYao Qin0Guisong Xia1Kun Li2Yuanxin Ye3Weiping Ni4Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, Xi’an, 710024, ChinaSchool of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, ChinaCollege of Big Data and Information Engineering, Guizhou University, Guiyang, 550025, ChinaFaculty of Geosciences and Environmental Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031, ChinaNorthwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, Xi’an, 710024, China; Corresponding author.Recently, graph clustering has been applied to hyperspectral image (HSI) clustering and proves to be effective on capturing the complex affinity among hyperspectral samples to a certain extent. However, graph clustering based on sample-level affinity usually suffers from a heavy computation overhead due to the generation of coefficient matrices. Meanwhile, since the spatial information of HSIs may not be sufficiently utilized in these methods, it is difficult for them to obtain robust clustering performance when processing various HSIs. In order to alleviate the negative effect of sample-level affinity, we achieve evolving superpixel-level affinity (ESA) by collaboratively integrating the sample-level contrastive learning (CL) for learning discriminative features with finding the inter-superpixel good neighbors (GN) of each sample. Initially, CL is operated based on the assumption of homogeneous superpixels to pull together samples from the same superpixel and the learned features are fed to the smooth representation model to pursue the representation coefficients that used for generating GN. Then, the superpixel-level affinity is updated by simply converting the similarity between samples in each pair of GN into the similarity of the corresponding superpixels. By combining the homogeneous assumption of superpixels with the updated superpixel-level affinity, further CL is achieved to acquire more GN. In this way, CL and generation of GN works collaboratively to evolutionarily solve the superpixel-level affinity. When the process finishes, density-based spectral clustering is first implemented on several affinity matrices selected by designed growth rate of Eigenvalues of normalized Laplacian matrix to obtain clustering results of superpixels. The superpixel-to-pixels projection is then applied to these results to gain clustering maps. Finally, the majority vote strategy is adopted to realize the final clustering. Comprehensive experiments on four benchmark HSIs demonstrate that the proposed ESA method is superior to the considered baseline counterparts in terms of clustering accuracy.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843225001487Hyperspectral image clustering (HSIC)SuperpixelAffinity learningGood neighbors (GN)Contrastive learning (CL)
spellingShingle Yao Qin
Guisong Xia
Kun Li
Yuanxin Ye
Weiping Ni
Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
International Journal of Applied Earth Observations and Geoinformation
Hyperspectral image clustering (HSIC)
Superpixel
Affinity learning
Good neighbors (GN)
Contrastive learning (CL)
title Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
title_full Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
title_fullStr Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
title_full_unstemmed Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
title_short Evolving superpixel-level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
title_sort evolving superpixel level affinity based on contrastive learning and good neighbors for hyperspectral image clustering
topic Hyperspectral image clustering (HSIC)
Superpixel
Affinity learning
Good neighbors (GN)
Contrastive learning (CL)
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1569843225001487
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AT yuanxinye evolvingsuperpixellevelaffinitybasedoncontrastivelearningandgoodneighborsforhyperspectralimageclustering
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