Automatic de-noising of close-range hyperspectral images with a wavelength-specific shearlet-based image noise reduction method

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) has become an essential tool for exploration of different spatially-resolved properties of materials in analytical chemistry. However, due to various technical factors such as detector sensitivity, choice of light source and experimental conditions, the recorded data contain noise. The presence of noise in the data limits the potential of different data processing tasks such as classification and can even make them ineffective. Therefore, reduction/removal of noise from the data is a useful step to improve the data modelling. In the present work, the potential of a wavelength-specific shearlet-based image noise reduction method was utilised for automatic de-noising of close-range HS images. The shearlet transform is a special type of composite wavelet transform that utilises the shearing properties of the images. The method first utilises the spectral correlation between wavelengths to distinguish between levels of noise present in different image planes of the data cube. Based on the level of noise present, the method adapts the use of the 2-D non-subsampled shearlet transform (NSST) coefficients obtained from each image plane to perform the spatial and spectral de-noising. Furthermore, the method was compared with two commonly used pixel-based spectral de-noising techniques, Savitzky-Golay (SAVGOL) smoothing and median filtering. The methods were compared using simulated data, with Gaussian and Gaussian and spike noise added, and real HSI data. As an application, the methods were tested to determine the efficacy of a visible-near infrared (VNIR) HSI camera to perform non-destructive automatic classification of six commercial tea products. De-noising with the shearlet-based method resulted in a visual improvement in the quality of the noisy image planes and the spectra of simulated and real HSI. The spectral correlation was highest with the shearlet-based method. The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) obtained using the shearlet-based method was higher than that for SAVGOL smoothing and median filtering. There was a clear improvement in the classification accuracy of the SVM models for both the simulated and real HSI data that had been de-noised using the shearlet-based method. The method presented is a promising technique for automatic de-noising of close-range HS images, especially when the amount of noise present is high and in consecutive wavelengths.