Weak-Supervised Deep Learning Methods for the Analysis of Multi-Source Satellite Remote Sensing Images

Satellite remote sensing has revolutionized the acquisition of large amounts of data, employing both active and passive sensors to capture critical information about our planet. These data can be analysed by using deep learning methodologies that demonstrate excellent capabilities in extracting the semantics from the data. However, one of the main challenges in exploiting the power of deep learning for remote sensing applications is the lack of labeled training data. Deep learning architectures, typically demand substantial quantities of training samples to achieve optimal performance. Motivated by the above-mentioned challenges, this thesis focuses on the limited availability of labeled datasets. These challenges include issues such as ambiguous labels in case of large-scale remote sensing datasets, particularly when dealing with the analysis of multi-source satellite remote sensing images. By employing novel deep learning techniques and cutting-edge methodologies, this thesis endeavors to contribute to advancements in the field of remote sensing. In this thesis, the problems related to limited labels are solved in several ways by developing (i) a novel spectral index generative adversarial network to augment real training samples for generating class-specific remote sensing data to provide a large number of labeled samples to train a neural-network classifier; (ii) a mono- and dual-regulated contractive-expansive-contractive convolutional neural network architecture to incorporate spatial-spectral information of multispectral data and minimize the loss in the feature maps and extends this approach to the analysis of hyperspectral images; (iii) a hybrid deep learning architecture with a discrete wavelet transform and attention mechanism to deal with few labeled samples for scene-based classification of multispectral images; and (iv) a weak supervised semantic learning technique that utilises weak or low-resolution labeled samples with multisource remote sensing images for predicting pixel-wise land-use-land-cover maps. The experiments show that the proposed approaches perform better than the state-of-the-art methods on different benchmark datasets and in different conditions.