A Multi-Feature Framework for Quantifying Information Content of Optical Remote Sensing Imagery

Abstract

Quantifying the information content of remote sensing images is considered to be a fundamental task in quantitative remote sensing. Traditionally, the grayscale entropy designed by Shannon’s information theory cannot capture the spatial structure of images, which has prompted successive proposals of a series of neighborhood-based improvement schemes. However, grayscale or neighborhood-based spatial structure is only a basic feature of the image, and the spatial structure should be divided into the overall structure and the local structure and separately characterized. For this purpose, a multi-feature quantification framework for image information content is proposed. Firstly, the information content of optical remote sensing images is measured based on grayscale, contrast, neighborhood-based topology, and spatial distribution features instead of simple grayscale or spatial structure. Secondly, the entropy metrics of the different features are designed to quantify the uncertainty of images in terms of both pixel and spatial structure. Finally, a weighted model is used to calculate the comprehensive information content of the image. The experimental results confirm that the proposed method can effectively measure the multi-feature information content, including the overall and local spatial structure. Compared with state-of-the-art entropy models, our approach is the first study to systematically consider the multiple features of image information content based on Shannon entropy. It is comparable to existing models in terms of thermodynamic consistency. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of information theory methods in measuring the information content of optical remote sensing images.