Extraction of metamorphic minerals by multiscale segmentation combined with random forest

The identification of metamorphic minerals is the basis of metamorphic rock research. Extraction of mineral information by remote sensing technology has been widely used. Digital image processing technology is also effectively applied to remote sensing image processing. Results show that the band ratio of remote sensing images can enhance mineral information, while the variogram function can describe the spatial correlation and variability of image pixels and extract more detailed texture information. The metamorphic minerals are found to present a block or strip distribution. The object-oriented remote sensing image information extraction method can avoid the “salt and pepper phenomenon” based on pixel extraction. Meanwhile, the random forest classification method has a fast calculation speed and high parameter accuracy. It is not sensitive to the noise caused by more lithologic components and its classification effect is found to be stable. To improve the extraction accuracy of metamorphic minerals from remote sensing images and further improve the recognition effect of metamorphic zones, this paper combined the ratio operation, multiscale segmentation, and random forest classification to extract metamorphic mineral information from ASTER images in Beishan area in Gansu Province. Initially, the image was enhanced by the ratio formula of the characteristic spectral structure of the target mineral. Multiscale image segmentation was then performed based on the spectrum and variogram. Finally, the accuracy was evaluated by the thin film identification results of the field exploration samples after the extraction of the target mineral by random forest. Results show that biotite, muscovite, and amphibole have identification characteristics on the ASTER image with an extraction accuracy of 85.4088%, 84.7640%, and 85.7308%, respectively. The extraction accuracy of other metamorphic minerals with less content are found to reach more than 60%. Multiscale segmentation can make full use of the clustering features of minerals and the variogram texture can enhance the ability of morphological features to distinguish the minerals. Random forest is not sensitive to noise and the extraction results are observed to be stable.