椭球径向基函数神经网络(EBF)是在径向基函数(RBF)映射理论基础上的改进。在保留RBF3层网络结构基础上,EBF采用了最大期望算法来估计特征空间的混合密度分布参数,用椭球体集合来分解混合密度分布,从而构造了神经网络的中间层基函数的状态。由于遥感数据在特征空间中通常表现为混合密度分布,EBF模型能够充分利用期望最大(EM)算法获得的最大似然参数估计得到更合理的特征空间的密度分解模型,从而使得EBF模型能够保留RBF非线性复杂映射能力的同时,获得更合理的分类结果。为此提出了基于EBF的遥感分类方法,试验结果表明EBF方法比RBF方法网络连接更简单、分类精度更高。

An elliptical basis function (EBF) network is proposed in this study for the classification of remotely sensed images. Though similar in structure, the EBF network differs from the well-known radial basis function (RBF) network by incorporating full covariance matrices and uses the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the basis functions. Since remotely sensed data often take on mixture-density distributions in the feature space, the proposed network not only possesses the advantage of the RBF mechanism but also utilizes the EM algorithm to compute the maximum likelihood estimates of the mean vectors and covariance matrices of a Gaussian mixture distribution in the training phase, which leas to more reasonable classification. Experimental results show that, compared to RBF network, the EM-based EBF network is more accurate and simpler in structure.