Vertex Component Analysis: A~Fast Algorithm to Extract Endmembers Spectra from Hyperspectral Data

Linear spectral mixture analysis, or linear unmixing, has proven to be a useful tool in hyperspectral remote sensing applications. It aims at estimating the number of reference substances, also called endmembers, their spectral signature and abundance fractions, using only the observed data (mixed pixels). This paper presents new method that performs unsupervised endmember extraction from hyperspectral data. The algorithm exploits a simple geometric fact: endmembers are vertices of a simplex. The algorithm complexity, measured in floating points operations, is O(n), where n is the sample size. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is illustrated using simulated data.