Hyperspectral Image Classification Using CapsNet With Well-Initialized Shallow Layers

In this letter, an alternative data-driven HSI classification model based on CapsNet is proposed rather than recently predominant convolutional neural network (CNN)-based models. To adjust the CapsNet to HSI classification, we tune a new CapsNet architecture with three convolutional layers. The added shallow layer provides higher level features to the primary capsules, which indirectly speeds up the following routing procedure. To guarantee a good convergence of the whole CapsNet, the three shallow layers are initialized by transferring convolutional parameters from a pretrained CNN model. The improved CapsNet-based models with and without vote strategy both achieve significantly superior performance in HSI classification to the state-of-the-art CNN-based methods on real hyperspectral data sets.