Joint Spatial-Spectral Convolutional Neural Network Enhanced with Attention Mechanism for Optimized Hyperspectral Image Classification

Hyperspectral imagery (HSI) classification is essential for remote sensing analysis, utilizing various image bands. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are prevalent in deep learning for visual data processing, with recent applications in HSI classification primarily employing 2D and 3D CNNs. However, 3D CNNs demand significant computational resources due to their complexity. This paper introduces a two-branch spatial-spectral joint convolutional neural network (SSDB) leveraging an attention mechanism for HSI classification. SSDB effectively extracts spectral and spatial information while reducing model complexity, resulting in a lightweight alternative to 3D CNNs. In this comprehensive hyperspectral image (HSI) classification experiments utilizing the Indian Pines, Pavia University, and Salinas Scene datasets, we benchmarked our findings against leading-edge handcrafted and end-to-end deep learning methodologies, demonstrating exceptionally commendable performance with the SSDB approach.