Principal Components of

GLCM Texture Measures:

What can they tell us
and are they useful?

Mryka Hall-Beyer and Archana Srivastava

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 Outline
• Why texture?
• Correlation among the texture measures
• Results of PCA of 8 GLCM textures
– Three window sizes
• Practical results
• Conclusions

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 Why texture?
• Important after spectral reflectance in
identifying and characterising objects
• Different information from spectral data
• Classification: Including a quantitative
measure of texture should and does
improve class identification

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 “Texture Measures”
• Grey Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM)
records
– what GL values occur next to what others
– how often they occur
• Calculations based on the GLCM yield
numbers whose relative value interprets a
particular kind of texture
– These are called “measures” from here on
Tutorial: http://fp.ucalgary.ca/mhallbey

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 Measures used
• HOM: homogeneity
• CON: contrast
• DIS: dissimilarity
• MEAN: GLCM mean
• STD: GLCM standard deviation
• ENT: entropy
• ASM: angular second moment (energy)
• COR: GLCM correlation

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 The practical problem
• There are too many measures
– Can just one work for all image objects?
• If so, which one?
– If not, how many do you need?
• which ones?
• Measures are usually correlated with one
another
– Classification needs maximally uncorrelated
data inputs

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 Often, one or two measures are
selected based on
intuition
experience
software defaults
guessing

There must be a better way!

Haralick in 1973 suggested PCA.

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 Landsat 5 band 4

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 Expectations
• The texture measure equations lead us to
expect high correlation between:
– CON and DIS (positive)
– ENT and DIS (positive)
– HOM and DIS (negative)
– ENT and HOM (negative)
– ENT and ASM (negative)
• Expect that these will show up in early
components

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Correlation matrix of texture measures
25x25 pixel window
HOM CON DIS MEAN STD ENT ASM COR
HOM 1 -0.45 -0.80 0.28 -0.28 -0.94 0.72 0.14
CON -0.45 1 0.88 -0.14 0.72 0.49 -0.16 -0.05
DIS -0.80 0.88 1 -0.25 0.62 0.79 -0.42 -0.11
MEAN 0.28 -0.14 -0.25 1 0.02 -0.12 -0.11 0.35
STD -0.28 0.72 0.62 0.02 1 0.46 -0.18 0.50
ENT -0.94 0.49 0.79 -0.12 0.46 1 -0.80 0.10
ASM 0.72 -0.16 -0.42 -0.11 -0.18 -0.80 1 -0.17
COR 0.14 -0.05 -0.11 0.35 0.50 0.10 -0.17 1
Green: expected positive correlation
Red: expected negative correlation
Blue: high correlation not predicted from calculation method

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 PC – texture measure loadings
25x25 window size
PC1: 50.13% of total vairance PC2: 20.85% of total variance

Cumulative variance 70.72%

Cumulative variance 50.13%

COR COR
ASM ASM
ENT ENT
STD STD
MEAN MEAN
DIS DIS
CON CON
HOM HOM
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Cumulative variance 87.62%

PC3: 16.90% of total variance PC4: 8.53% of total variance

Cumulative variance 96.15%

COR COR
ASM ASM
ENT ENT
STD STD
MEAN MEAN
DIS DIS
CON CON
HOM HOM
-0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1

PC 1 through 4: total 96.15% of dataset variance (PC1-3 87.62%)

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PC1: “Connectivity”?
• 50.13% of total dataset
variance
• Represents contrast of
PC1
COR with remaining low high
measures
– Bright pixels: pixels having
both high COR and low others
• Geographical feature
emphasized: linear features
PC1: 50.13% of total vairance

COR
ASM
ENT
STD
MEAN
DIS
CON
Original image
HOM
Hall-Beyer & Srivastava IGARSS August 2006 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
12
PC2:
“Interior” textures?
• 20.85% of total dataset
variance
• Represents Contrast of PC2
HOM and MEAN with low high
PC1

remaining measures
• Geographical features
represented: land cover
differences
PC2: 20.85% of total variance

COR
ASM
ENT
STD
MEAN
DIS
CON
HOM
-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Original image
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PC3:
Connectivity again?
• 16.9% of total dataset
variance
• Mirror image (almost) of
PC1 PC2
PC1
– Edges have low values low high

• Represents contrast of
COR, HOM and others
with ENT and DIS
• Geographical feature
emphasized: linear
features.
PC3: 16.90% of total variance

COR
ASM
ENT
STD
MEAN
DIS
CON
HOM
-0.5 0 0.5 1 Original image
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 Summarizing
PCA of these 8 GLCM texture measures
finds two “basic” textures:
• connected/linear features:
– PC1 and 3: 67% of dataset texture variance
– COR and HOM in contrast with others
• object “interior” textures
– PC2: 21% of dataset texture variance
– MEAN in contrast with others

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 Superposition of one connectivity component, one
interior texture component, and original image, 25x25
window
r=PC1
(edges)
g=original
band 4
image
b= PC2
(interior)

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 We tested PCA of these 8 texture measures
for other window sizes on the same image.
Similar trends were noted.

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 5x5 window size
Rgb=PC1, original, PC4
• first 4 PCs each > 10% total variance
• PC1 and 2 connectivity, PC4 interior
• Connectivity components are heavily
loaded with COR and HOM
• Interior components are heavily loaded
with MEAN
• “Connectivity” components account for
85% of variance, interior components for
12%
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 13x13 window size
Rgb=PC1, original,
• First 4 PCs each >10% total variance PC4

• PC1 and 2 connectivity, PC3 and 4 interior

• Connectivity components are heavily
loaded with CON
• Interior components are heavily loaded
with MEAN and HOM
• “Connectivity” components account for
83% of variance, “interior” components
12%
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 Conclusions
• In this image, for all tested window sizes there
are two fundamental textures, characterised as
“connectivity” and “interior textures”
• “Connectivity” components rely on COR in
combination with other measures, especially
HOM
• “Interior” textures rely on MEAN in combination
• Connectivity accounts for more texture than
interior

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 Further conclusions
• Practical: 2 or 3 components capture these two
fundamental textures.
• Both textures occur in first 4 PCs but it cannot
be predicted in which.
– Connectivity usually in PC1, interior in 2, or 3, or 4
• COR, HOM and MEAN are important in their
contrast to other measures, it cannot be
concluded that they can be used alone to
capture these two fundamental textures

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 Unexpected
• Against predictions, the expected
correlations (HOM and CON, e.g.) did not
cluster in early components.

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 Remaining question – among many
others
• Does this pattern hold true for very
different scene components? Spatial
resolutions?

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 More information
This powerpoint, and a more detailed
version with additional data and images,
will be posted at

http://fp.ucalgary.ca/mhallbey

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