Detecting regions of change in multiple images of the same scene taken at different times is of widespread interest due to a large number of applications in diverse disciplines, including remote sensing, surveillance, medical diagnosis and treatment, civil infrastructure, and underwater sensing. This paper presents a systematic survey of the common processing steps and core decision rules in modern change detection algorithms, including significance and hypothesis testing, predictive models, the shading model, and background modeling. We also discuss important preprocessing methods, approaches to enforcing the consistency of the change mask, and principles for evaluating and comparing the performance of change detection algorithms. It is hoped that our classification of algorithms into a relatively small number of categories will provide useful guidance to the algorithm designer.

This paper presents a novel approach to unsupervised change detection in multispectral remote-sensing images. The proposed approach aims at extracting the change information by jointly analyzing the spectral channels of multitemporal images in the original feature space without any training data. This is accomplished by using a selective Bayesian thresholding for deriving a pseudotraining set that is necessary for initializing an adequately defined binary semisupervised support vector machine classifier. Starting from these initial seeds, the performs change detection in the original multitemporal feature space by gradually considering unlabeled patterns in the definition of the decision boundary between changed and unchanged pixels according to a semisupervised learning algorithm. This algorithm models the full complexity of the change-detection problem, which is only partially represented from the seed pixels included in the pseudotraining set. The values of the classifier parameters are then defined according to a novel unsupervised model-selection technique based on a similarity measure between change-detection maps obtained with different settings. Experimental results obtained on different multispectral remote-sensing images confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

In this article, a novel approach using ensemble of semi-supervised classifiers is proposed for change detection in remotely sensed images. Unlike the other traditional methodologies for detection of changes in land-cover, the present work uses a multiple classifier system in semi-supervised (leaning) framework instead of using a single weak classifier. Iterative learning of base classifiers is continued using the selected unlabeled patterns along with a few labeled patterns. Ensemble agreement is utilized for choosing the unlabeled patterns for the next training step. Finally, each of the unlabeled patterns is assigned to a specific class by fusing the outcome of base classifiers using some combination rule. For the present investigation, multilayer perceptron (MLP), elliptical basis function neural network (EBFNN) and fuzzy k-nearest neighbor (k-nn) techniques are used as base classifiers. Experiments are carried out on multi-temporal and multi-spectral images and the results are compared with the change detection techniques using MLP, EBFNN, fuzzy k-nn, unsupervised modified self-organizing feature map and semi-supervised MLP. Results show that the proposed work has an edge over the other state-of-the-art techniques for change detection.

This paper describes new extensions to the previously published multivariate alteration detection (MAD) method for change detection in bi-temporal, multi- and hypervariate data such as remote sensing imagery. Much like boosting methods often applied in data mining work, the iteratively reweighted (IR) MAD method in a series of iterations places increasing focus on "difficult" observations, here observations whose change status over time is uncertain. The MAD method is based on the established technique of canonical correlation analysis: for the multivariate data acquired at two points in time and covering the same geographical region, we calculate the canonical variates and subtract them from each other. These orthogonal differences contain maximum information on joint change in all variables (spectral bands). The change detected in this fashion is invariant to separate linear (affine) transformations in the originally measured variables at the two points in time, such as 1) changes in gain and offset in the measuring device used to acquire the data, 2) data normalization or calibration schemes that are linear (affine) in the gray values of the original variables, or 3) orthogonal or other affine transformations, such as principal component (PC) or maximum autocorrelation factor (MAF) transformations. The IR-MAD method first calculates ordinary canonical and original MAD variates. In the following iterations we apply different weights to the observations, large weights being assigned to observations that show little change, i.e., for which the sum of squared, standardized MAD variates is small, and small weights being assigned to observations for which the sum is large. Like the original MAD method, the iterative extension is invariant to linear (affine) transformations of the original variables. To stabilize solutions to the (IR-)MAD problem, some form of regularization may be needed. This is especially useful for work on hyperspectral data. This paper describes ordinary two-set canonical correlation analysis, the MAD transformation, the iterative extension, and three regularization schemes. A simple case with real Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data at one point in time and (partly) constructed data at the other point in time that demonstrates the superiority of the iterative scheme over the original MAD method is shown. Also, examples with SPOT High Resolution Visible data from an agricultural region in Kenya, and hyperspectral airborne HyMap data from a small rural area in southeastern Germany are given. The latter case demonstrates the need for regularization

Change detection with remotely sensed imagery plays an important role in land cover mapping, process analysis and dynamic information services. Euclidean distance, correlation and other mathematic metrics between spectral curves have been used to calculate change magnitude in most change detection methods. However, many pseudo changes would also be detected because of inter-class spectral variance, which remains a significant challenge for operational remote sensing applications. In general, different land cover types have their own spectral curves characterized by typical spectral values and shapes. These spectral values are widely used for designing change detection algorithms. However, the shape of spectral curves has not yet been fully considered. This paper proposes to use spectral gradient difference (SGD) to quantitatively describe the spectral shapes and the differences in shape between two spectra. Change magnitude calculated in the new spectral gradient space is used to detect the change/no-change areas. Then, a chain model is employed to represent the SGD pattern both qualitatively and quantitatively. Finally, the land cover change types are determined by pattern matching with the knowledgebase of reference SGD patterns. The effectiveness of this SGD-based change detection approach was verified by a simulation experiment and a case study of Landsat data. The results indicated that the SGD-based approach was superior to the traditional methods. (C) 2013 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS) Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Change detection is one of the most important open topics for multi-temporal remote sensing technology to observe the earth. Recently, many methods are proposed to detect the land-cover change information by multi-temporal hyperspectral images. However, many existing traditional change detection methods failed to utilize the spectral information effectively. Hence the models are not robust enough for more widely applications with “noise” bands. In this case, a semi-supervised distance metric learning method is proposed to detect the change areas by abundant spectral information of hyperspectral image under the “noisy” condition. This paper focuses on semi-supervised change detection method, and proposes a new distance metric learning framework for change detection in “noisy” condition with three mainly contributions: (1) Distance metric learning is demonstrated to be an effective method for revealing the change information by high spectral features. (2) An evolution regular framework is utilized to handle change detection under a “noisy” condition without removing any noise bands, which is impacted by atmosphere (or water) and always removed manually in other literatures. (3) A semi-supervised Laplacian Regularized Metric Learning method is exploited to tackle the ill-posed sample problem, and large unlabeled data is exploited in our method. The proposed method is performed on two multi-temporal hyperspectral datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art change detection methods under both “ideal” and “noisy” conditions.

Human settlement expansion is one of the most pervasive forms of land cover change in the Gauteng province of South Africa. A method for detecting new settlement developments in areas that are typically covered by natural vegetation using 500 m MODIS time-series satellite data is proposed. The method is a per pixel change alarm that uses the temporal autocorrelation to infer a change index which yields a change or no-change decision after thresholding. Simulated change data was generated and used to determine a threshold during an off-line optimization phase. After optimization the method was evaluated on examples of known land cover change in the study area and experimental results indicate a 92% change detection accuracy with a 15% false alarm rate. The method shows good performance when compared to a traditional NDVI differencing method that achieved a 75% change detection accuracy with a 24% false alarm rate for the same study area.

Recent development has identified the benefits of using hyper-temporal satellite time series data for land cover change detection and classification in South Africa. In particular, the monitoring of human settlement expansion in the Limpopo province is of relevance as it is the one of the most pervasive forms of land-cover change in this province which covers an area of roughly 125000km2. In this paper, a spatio-temporal autocorrelation change detection (STACD) method is developed to improve the performance of a pixel based temporal Autocorrelation change detection (TACD) method previously proposed. The objective is to apply the algorithm to large areas to detect the conversion of natural vegetation to settlement which is then validated by an operator using additional data (such as high resolution imagery). Importantly, as the objective of the method is to indicate areas of potential change to operators for further analysis, a low false alarm rate is required while achieving an acceptable probability of detection. Results indicate that detection accuracies of 70% of new settlement instances are achievable at a false alarm rate of less than 1% with the STACD method, an improvement of up to 17% compared to the original TACD formulation.

Remote sensing images are useful for monitoring the spatial distribution and growth of urban built-up areas because they can provide timely and synoptic views of urban land cover. Although the normalized difference built-up index (NDBI) is useful to map urban built-up areas, it still has some limitations. This study sought to improve the NDBI by using a semiautomatic segmentation approach. The proposed approach had more than 20% higher overall accuracy than the original method when both were implemented simultaneously at the National Olympic Park (NOP), Beijing, China. One reason for the improvement is that the proposed NDBI approach separates urban areas from barren and bare land to some extent. More importantly, the proposed method eliminates the original assumption that a positive NDBI value should indicate built-up areas and a positive normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value should indicate vegetation. The new method has improved universality and lower commission error compared with the original method.

In this study, urban building change detection is investigated, considering that buildings are one of the most dynamic structures in urban areas. To this aim, a novel building change detection approach for multitemporal high-resolution images is proposed based on a recently developed morphological building index (MBI), which is able to automatically indicate the presence of buildings from high-resolution images. In the MBI-based change detection framework, the changed building information is decomposed into MBI, spectral, and shape conditions. A variation of the MBI is a basic condition for the indication of changed buildings. Besides, the spectral information is used as a mask since the change of buildings is primarily related to the spectral variation, and the shape condition is then used as a post-filter to remove irregular structures such as noise and road-like narrow objects. The change detection framework is carried out based on a threshold-based processing at both the feature and decision levels. The advantages of the proposed method are that it does not need any training samples and it is capable of reducing human labor, considering the fact that the current building change detection methods are totally reliant on visual interpretation. The proposed method is evaluated with a QuickBird dataset from 2002 and 2005 covering Hongshan District of Wuhan City, China. The experiments show that the proposed change detection algorithms can achieve satisfactory correctness rates (over 80%) with a low level of total errors (less than 10%), and give better results than the supervised change detection using the support vector machine (SVM).

Remote-sensing-based multi-temporal satellite images allow the mapping of changes in built-up areas over time to illustrate the urban development. An improved normalized difference built-up index (NDBI) has recently been promoted as a more effective algorithm to identify built-up regions, compared with the conventional NDBI approach. The conventional NDBI algorithm assumes that difference between the values of the binary NDBI and binary normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) would indicate built-up areas. The modified NDBI approach improves this assumption by assigning higher positive difference values of continuous NDBI and NDVI to built-up region using an optimal threshold value. This article extends the concept of improved NDBI approach to automate the extraction of built-up changes using multi-temporal satellite images. An automated kernel-based thresholding algorithm is used to sort the difference values of multi-temporal built-up image, obtained from modified improved NDBI differencing algorithm, into built-up and no-built-up change regions for enhancing the efficiency of built-up change detection process. The improved NDBI differencing algorithm better detects built-up change regions than original NDBI differencing algorithm. As a case study, the proposed algorithm has been implemented on Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) images of a typical Indian city and surrounding areas for built-up change detection.

61Random forests potential for mapping deserts' LULC using spectral & ancillary data.61Stages of change in LULC of Egyptian northwestern desert due development activities.61Markov-CA approach merit for projecting future land use changes in arid regions.61Understanding changes in LULC can help guide conservation planning in arid regions.

In this paper a new approach to performing change detection analyses based on a combination of supervised and unsupervised techniques is presented. Two remotely sensed, independently classified images are compared. The change estimation is performed according to the Post Classification Comparison (PCC) method if the posterior probability values are sufficiently high; otherwise a land cover transition matrix, automatically obtained from data, is used. The proposed technique is compared with the traditional PCC approach. It is shown that the new approach correctly detects the “true change” without overestimating the “false” one, while PCC points out “true change” pixels together with a large number of “false changes”.

In this paper, we propose a probabilistic model for detecting relevant changes in registered aerial image pairs taken with the time differences of several years and in different seasonal conditions. The introduced approach, called the conditional mixed Markov model, is a combination of a mixed Markov model and a conditionally independent random field of signals. The model integrates global intensity statistics with local correlation and contrast features. A global energy optimization process ensures simultaneously optimal local feature selection and smooth observation-consistent segmentation. Validation is given on real aerial image sets provided by the Hungarian Institute of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing and Google Earth.

Classifying segments and detecting changes in terrestrial areas are important and time-consuming efforts for remote sensing image analysis tasks, including comparison and retrieval in repositories containing multitemporal remote image samples for the same area in very different quality and details. We propose a multilayer fusion model for adaptive segmentation and change detection of optical remote sensing image series, where trajectory analysis or direct comparison is not applicable. Our method applies unsupervised or partly supervised clustering on a fused-image series by using cross-layer similarity measure, followed by multilayer Markov random field segmentation. The resulted label map is applied for the automatic training of single layers. After the segmentation of each single layer separately, changes are detected between single label maps. The significant benefit of the proposed method has been numerically validated on remotely sensed image series with ground-truth data.

Remote-sensing technology provides a powerful means for land use/land cover (LU/LC) monitoring at global and regional scales. However, it is more efficient and effective to combine remote-sensing measurements with a geographic information system (GIS) database and expert knowledge for change updating than to use remote-sensing technology alone. In this article, these different sources of information are integrated in the proposed framework, which is able to provide rapid updating of LU/LC information. An object-based data analysis is adopted for thematic mapping, taking both spectral and spatial properties into consideration. An expert knowledge coding is introduced and combined quantitatively with other evidence provided by remotely sensed data and the GIS database. A case study using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) datasets demonstrated an overall successful LU/LC map updating and a satisfactory change detection using the proposed change-updating framework.

The appetite for up-to-date information about earth's surface is ever increasing, as such information provides a base for a large number of applications, including local, regional and global resources monitoring, land-cover and land-use change monitoring, and environmental studies. The data from remote sensing satellites provide opportunities to acquire information about land at varying resolutions and has been widely used for change detection studies. A large number of change detection methodologies and techniques, utilizing remotely sensed data, have been developed, and newer techniques are still emerging. This paper begins with a discussion of the traditionally pixel-based and (mostly) statistics-oriented change detection techniques which focus mainly on the spectral values and mostly ignore the spatial context. This is succeeded by a review of object-based change detection techniques. Finally there is a brief discussion of spatial data mining techniques in image processing and change detection from remote sensing data. The merits and issues of different techniques are compared. The importance of the exponential increase in the image data volume and multiple sensors and associated challenges on the development of change detection techniques are highlighted. With the wide use of very-high-resolution (VHR) remotely sensed images, object-based methods and data mining techniques may have more potential in change detection. (C) 2013 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS) Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

针对遥感影像上居民地纹理的特点,将基于方差的纹理分析方法、基于LAWS纹理能量测度的纹理分析方法、基于LBP/C（local binary pattern/contrast）的纹理分析方法分别对遥感影像上的居民地纹理特征进行分析描述;然后进行基于区域生长的扩张检测,得到居民地变化检测的结果。对不同地区、不同居民地分布情况的遥感影像进行了居民地扩张变化检测的试验。结果表明,基于LBP/C的变化检测方法可以高精度地检测出居民地的扩张变化,并提高了检测的自动化程度。

The updating of geodatabases (GDB) in urban environments is a difficult and expensive task. It may be facilitated by an automatic change detection method. Several methods have been developed for medium and low spatial resolution images. This study proposes a new method for change detection of buildings in urban environments from very high spatial resolution images (VHSR) and using existing digital cartographic data. The proposed methodology is composed of several stages. The existing knowledge on the buildings and the other urban objects are first modelled and saved in a knowledge base. Some change detection rules are defined at this stage. Then, the image is segmented. The parameters of segmentation are computed thanks to the integration between the image and the geodatabase. Thereafter, the segmented image is analyzed using the knowledge base to localize the segments where the change of building is likely to occur. The change detection rules are then applied on these segments to identify the segments that represent the changes of buildings. These changes represent the updates of buildings to be added to the geodatabase. The data used in this research concern the city of Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) and the city of Rabat (Morocco). For Sherbrooke, we used an Ikonos image acquired in October 2006 and a GDB at the scale of 1:20,000. For Rabat, a QuickBird image acquired in August 2006 has been used with a GDB at the scale of 1:10,000. The rate of good detection is 90%. The proposed method presents some limitations on the detection of the exact contours of the buildings. It could be improved by including a shape post-analysis of detected buildings. The proposed method could be integrated into a cartographic update process or as a method for the quality assessment of a geodatabase. It could be also be used to identify illegal building work or to monitor urban growth.