Automatic house detection from high-resolution satellite imagery

Abstract

We have developed a house detection method based on machine learning for classification of houses and non-houses. In order to achieve precise classification, it is important to select features and to determine a dimensionality reduction method and a learning method. We first applied Gabor wavelet filters to generate the feature vectors and then developed a new method using the Adaboost algorithm to reduce the dimensionality of feature space. If a linear classifier made by one element of a feature vector is considered as a weak classifier in Adaboost, higher contribution dimensions can be selected. We used support vector machines (SVM) for the learning method. We evaluated our method by using QuickBird panchromatic images. Despite the significant variations in house shape and rooftop color, and in background clutter, our algorithm achieved high accuracy in house detection.