A novel unsupervised change detection approach based on reconstruction independent component analysis and ABC-Kmeans clustering for environmental monitoring.

In this paper, I propose a new unsupervised change detection method for optical satellite imagery. The proposed technique consists of three phases. In the first stage, difference images are calculated using four different functions. Two of the functions were first used in this study. In the second stage, using Reconstruction Independent Component Analysis, this four-difference matrix is projected to one feature. In the last stage, clustering is performed. Kmeans tuned by Artificial Bee Colony (ABC-Kmeans) clustering technique has been developed and proposed by following a different strategy in the clustering phase. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was examined using two different datasets, Sardinia and Mexico. Quantitative evaluation was performed in two stages. In the first stage, proposed method was compared with different unsupervised change detection algorithms using False Alarm, Missed Alarm, Total Error, and Total Error Rate metrics which are calculated using ground truth image in dataset. In the second experimental study, the proposed approach is compared in detail with PCA-Kmeans approach, which is quite often preferred for similar studies, using the Mean Squared Error, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, Structural Similarity Index, and Universal Image Quality Index metrics. According to quantitative and qualitative analysis, proposed approach can produce quite successful results using optical remote sensing data.