Impact of Irreversible Data Compression on Spectral Distortion of Hyper-spectral Data

Goal of the present work is to investigate and compare different compression methodologies from the view-point of spectral distortion introduced in hyper-spectral pixel vectors. The main result of this analysis is that, for a given compression ratio, near-lossless methods, either MAD- or PMAD-constrained, are more suitable for preserving the spectral discrimination capability among pixel vectors, which is the principal outcome of spectral information. Therefore, whenever a lossless compression is not practicable, the use of near-lossless compression is recommended in such application where spectral quality is a crucial point.