A complementary integrated Transformer network for hyperspectral image classification

Abstract

Abstract In the past, convolutional neural network (CNN) has become one of the most popular deep learning frameworks, and has been widely used in Hyperspectral image classification tasks. Convolution (Conv) in CNN uses filter weights to extract features in local receiving domain, and the weight parameters are shared globally, which more focus on the high‐frequency information of the image. Different from Conv, Transformer can obtain the long‐term dependence between long‐distance features through modelling, and adaptively focus on different regions. In addition, Transformer is considered as a low‐pass filter, which more focuses on the low‐frequency information of the image. Considering the complementary characteristics of Conv and Transformer, the two modes can be integrated for full feature extraction. In addition, the most important image features correspond to the discrimination region, while the secondary image features represent important but easily ignored regions, which are also conducive to the classification of HSIs. In this study, a complementary integrated Transformer network (CITNet) for hyperspectral image classification is proposed. Firstly, three‐dimensional convolution (Conv3D) and two‐dimensional convolution (Conv2D) are utilised to extract the shallow semantic information of the image. In order to enhance the secondary features, a channel Gaussian modulation attention module is proposed, which is embedded between Conv3D and Conv2D. This module can not only enhance secondary features, but suppress the most important and least important features. Then, considering the different and complementary characteristics of Conv and Transformer, a complementary integrated Transformer module is designed. Finally, through a large number of experiments, this study evaluates the classification performance of CITNet and several state‐of‐the‐art networks on five common datasets. The experimental results show that compared with these classification networks, CITNet can provide better classification performance.

Keywords

• complementary integrated Transformer module
• convolutional neural network
• Gaussian modulation
• Transformer