Unsupervised change detection with expectation-maximization-based level set

The level set method, because of its implicit handling of topological changes and low sensitivity to noise, is one of the most effective unsupervised change detection techniques for remotely sensed images. In this letter, an expectation-maximization-based level set method (EMLS) is proposed to detect changes. First, the distribution of the difference image generated from multitemporal images is supposed to satisfy Gaussian mixture model, and expectation-maximization (EM) is then used to estimate the mean values of changed and unchanged pixels in the difference image. Second, two new energy terms, based on the estimated means, are defined and added into the level set method to detect those changes without initial contours and improve final accuracy. Finally, the improved level set method is implemented to partition pixels into changed and unchanged pixels. Landsat and QuickBird images were tested, and experimental results confirm the EMLS effectiveness when compared to state-of-the-art unsupervised change detection methods.