Mission Statement
Goals
History
Why is it called "VIPER" Tools?
Science
License
Projects
People
Participate
Mission Statement
The VIPER Tools Project is dedicated to developing user-friendly software tools for advanced Spectral Mixture Analysis of multispectral and hyperspectral remote sensing imagery.
Goals
The VIPER Tools project seeks to provide a suite of spectral processing tools for multiband passive optical remote sensing data including hyperspectral and multispectral imagery. The major components of the software are tools for creating and managing spectral libraries, for selection of optimal endmembers for Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA) and for calculating and interpreting SMA and Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) results.
Our goal in developing VIPER Tools has been to provide free, open source software that will enable other users to realize the full potential of MESMA. Included with these software are detailed instructions for installation and use of VIPER Tools. We also include a detailed User Manual, designed to help users learn how to use VIPER Tools.
Examples are drawn from Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometry (AVIRIS) data acquired over the Santa Barbara front range in June 2001. These data, and associated reference polygons and metadata have been described in several refereed publications including Roberts et al., (2003), Dennison and Roberts (2003a,b), Dennison et al., (2005) and Ustin et al., (2005).
Click here to go to the citations page.
History
The VIPER Tools project began as academic research in Spectral Mixture Analysis algorithm development and applications for natural resources mapping. It evolved into an GUI-based, end-user, software Add-on to the ENVI© software package.
It is currently striving towards the goal of becoming a dynamic, user-supported, open source remote sensing software project. The current focus of the project is to port IDL/ENVI code to open source platforms while leveraging existing open source math and image and geospatial libraries including GDAL/OGR.
Why "VIPER" Tools
The name VIPER Tools stems from Dr. Dar Robert's lab at UCSB's Geography Department - the Visualization and Image Processing for Environmental Research (VIPER) Lab. The VIPER Tools name was first used in a grant application in which we envisioned pulling together the disparate set of software tools which were being used by students and faculty in the lab for spectral mixture analysis. The grant was funded and the project succeeded beyond our initial hopes. The name stuck and users started asking for VIPER Tools by name, so VIPER Tools it is.
Science
For more information on the science of Spectral Mixture Analysis, look at the VIPER Tools User Manual, or check out the MESMA and citations pages
License
Starting at version 1.5, VIPER Tools is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3).
This means that VIPER Tools is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
VIPER Tools is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Click here to learn more about the GNU General Pulic License
Projects
The flagship VIPER Tools project is a GUI-based plug-in to the ENVI software package from ITT. As of version 1.5, this software has been released as open source.
VIPER Tools provides a set of key analysis tools for creating and managing spectral libraries, selecting optimal endmembers for Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA), calculating SMA and Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) fractions, and post-processing of SMA outputs including terrain correction and shade normalization.
- Create, Describe and Manage Spectral Libraries - VIPER Tools provides several tools for creating and managing spectral libraries. Generate spectral libraries using image spectra extracted from one or more Regions of Interest (ROIs) in an image. Take advantage of VIPER Tools' open and flexible format for spectral library metadata to more effectively manage spectral libraries. Utilize new tools for merging, scaling and sorting spectral libraries.
- View and Explore Spectral Library Data - Starting with version 1.3, VIPER Tools contains a new Spectral Library Viewer that allows users to display spectra while simultaneously exploring the associated metadata and viewing field photographs, if available. The Spectral Library Viewer provides an intuitive interface for viewing, sorting, and subsetting spectral libraries based on their spectral properties or their metadata.
- Select Optimal Endmembers for SMA - VIPER Tools provides 3 new tools for selecting optimal endmembers from a spectral library. EAR, MASA and CoB are spectral fit metrics that facilitate the selection of a parsimonious set of spectra for SMA.
- Knowledge-based Endmember Selection - CRES is an additional endmember selection method that allows for the selection of optimal endmembers and models when expert knowledge on the expected fractional abundance of a region is available a priori.
- Calculate SMA Fractions and Determine Best-fit Models - The SMA module is the core of VIPER Tools and allows for flexible and robust implementation of SMA and MESMA with an optional range of constraints, numbers of endmembers, models and more.
- Post-process SMA/MESMA Results - VIPER Tools provides the option to shade normalize or apply an empirically-based terrain correction of SMA/MESMA results when topography and solar geometry are known.
Click here to go to the main Projects page.
People
All code for the original VIPER Tools ENVI© Add-in has been written and maintained by Kerry Halligan (up until version 1.4). Principal players in the original viper tools project included:
Participate
The success of VIPER Tools is dependent upon the involvement of users like you. Whether you are just interested in using SMA/MESMA in your research, want to make minor modifications to suit your application, or hope to port and/or significantly extend VIPER Tools your participation is needed. From issue (bug) reports, to feature requests, to code contributions, every bit of help you can offer is appreciated.
