New paper: Change detection in urban settings with pixel-based+obia methods

Xiao, P, X Zhang, D Wang, M Yuan, X Feng, M Kelly. 2016. Change detection of built-up land: A framework of combining pixel-based detection and object-based recognition. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 119; 402–414

This study proposed a new framework that combines pixel-level change detection and object-level recognition to detect changes of built-up land from high-spatial resolution remote sensing images. First, an adaptive differencing method was designed to detect changes at the pixel level based on both spectral and textural features. Next, the changed pixels were subjected to a set of morphological operations to improve the completeness and to generate changed objects, achieving the transition of change detection from the pixel level to the object level. The changed objects were further recognised through the difference of morphological building index in two phases to indicate changed objects on built-up land. The transformation from changed pixels to changed objects makes the proposed framework distinct with both the pixel-based and the object-based change detection methods. Compared with the pixel-based methods, the proposed framework can improve the change detection capability through the transformation and successive recognition of objects. Compared with the object-based method, the proposed framework avoids the issue of multitemporal segmentation and can generate changed objects directly from changed pixels. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the transformation from changed pixels to changed objects and the successive object-based recognition on improving the detection accuracy, which justify the application potential of the proposed change detection framework.