Comparison of VCA and GAEE algorithms for Endmember Extraction

Abstract: Endmember Extraction is a critical step in hyperspectral image analysis and classification. It is an useful method to decompose a mixed spectrum into a collection of spectra and their corresponding proportions. In this paper, we solve a linear endmember extraction problem as an evolutionary optimization task, maximizing the Simplex Volume in the endmember space. We propose a standard genetic algorithm and a variation with In Vitro Fertilization module (IVFm) to find the best solutions and compare the results with the state-of-art Vertex Component Analysis (VCA) method and the traditional algorithms Pixel Purity Index (PPI) and N-FINDR. The experimental results on real and synthetic hyperspectral data confirms the overcome in performance and accuracy of the proposed approaches over the mentioned algorithms.