Joint coded aperture optimization and compressive hyperspectral image classification using 3D coded neural network

Hyperspectral image classification (HIC) is an active research topic in remote sensing. However, the huge volume of three-dimensional (3D) hyperspectral images poses big challenges in data acquisition, storage, transmission and processing. To overcome these limitations, this paper develops a novel deep learning HIC approach based on the compressive measurements of coded-aperture snapshot spectral imaging (CASSI) system, without reconstructing the complete hyperspectral data cube. A new kind of deep learning strategy, namely 3D coded convolutional neural network (3D-CCNN) is proposed to efficiently solve for the HIC problem, where the hardware-based coded aperture is regarded as a pixel-wise connected network layer. An end-to-end training method is developed to jointly optimize the network parameters and the coded aperture pattern with periodic structure. The accuracy of HIC approach is effectively improved by involving the degrees of optimization freedom from the coded aperture. The superiority of the proposed method is assessed on some public hyperspectral datasets over the state-of-the-art HIC methods.