Combining parametric and non-parametric algorithms for a partially unsupervised classification of multitemporal remote-sensing images

In this paper, we propose a classification system based on a multiple-classifier architecture, which is aimed at updating land-cover maps by using multisensor and/or multisource remote-sensing images. The proposed system is composed of an ensemble of classifiers that, once trained in a supervised way on a specific image of a given area, can be retrained in an unsupervised way to classify a new image of the considered site. In this context, two techniques are presented for the unsupervised updating of the parameters of a maximum-likelihood classifier and a radial basis function neural-network classifier, on the basis of the distribution of the new image to be classified. Experimental results carried out on a multitemporal and multisource remote-sensing data set confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.