A Combined Deep Learning Model for the Scene Classification of High-Resolution Remote Sensing Image

Deep learning now plays an important role in solving complex problems in computer vision fields. The highly challenging high-resolution remote sensing image scene classification problem can also be solved using deep learning methods. The most commonly used method of deep learning is the convolutional neural network model. In this letter, based on deep learning, a combined model named Inception-long short-term memory (LSTM) is proposed. First, we combine the deep learning feature extracted from the pretrained Inception-V3 model with a hand-crafted feature: the GIST feature. The different features are then combined and input into the batch normalization (BN) layer. Second, the BN layer plays the role of the bridge to combine the InceptionV3 model with the LSTM model, which features a softmax classifier. The LSTM model is used to analyze the features and classify the different high-resolution remote sensing scene images. The proposed model, as a whole, can be uniformly trained. Three different datasets-the NWPU-RESISC45 dataset, the UC Merced dataset, and the SIRI-WHU dataset-were used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results show that the proposed Inception-LSTM model shows an outstanding performance in the scene classification task.