Cloud Removal Using Gaussian Process Regression for Optical Image Reconstruction

Cloud removal is often required to construct time-series sets of optical images for environmental monitoring. In regression-based cloud removal, the selection of an appropriate regression model and the impact analysis of the input images significantly affect the prediction performance. This study evaluates the potential of Gaussian process (GP) regression for cloud removal and also analyzes the effects of cloud-free optical images and spectral bands on prediction performance. Unlike other machine learning-based regression models, GP regression provides uncertainty information and automatically optimizes hyperparameters. An experiment using Sentinel-2 multi-spectral images was conducted for cloud removal in the two agricultural regions. The prediction performance of GP regression was compared with that of random torest (RF) regression. Various combinations of input images and multi-spectral bands were considered for quantitative evaluations. The experimental results showed that using multi-temporal images with multi-spectral bands as inputs achieved the best prediction accuracy. Highly correlated adjacent multi-spectral bands and temporally correlated multi-temporal images resulted in an improved prediction accuracy. The prediction performance of GP regression was significantly improved in predicting the near-infrared band compared to that of RF regression. Estimating the distribution function of input data in GP regression could reflect the variations in the considered spectral band with a broader range. In particular, GP regression was superior to RF regression for reproducing structural patterns at both sites in terms of structural similarity. In addition, uncertainty information provided by GP regression showed a reasonable similarity to prediction errors for some sub-areas, indicating that uncertainty estimates may be used to measure the prediction result quality. These findings suggest that GP regression could be beneficial for cloud removal and optical image reconstruction. In addition, the impact analysis results of the input images provide guidelines for selecting optimal images for regression-based cloud removal.