# Is Pretraining Necessary for Hyperspectral Image Classification? Source: [Is Pretraining Necessary for Hyperspectral Image Classification?]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-25T21:22:52.893Z Authors: Hyungtae Lee, Sungmin Eum, Heesung Kwon Published: 2019-01-24T22:01:48.000Z ## Abstract We address two questions for training a convolutional neural network (CNN) for hyperspectral image classification: i) is it possible to build a pre-trained network? and ii) is the pre-training effective in furthering the performance? To answer the first question, we have devised an approach that pre-trains a network on multiple source datasets that differ in their hyperspectral characteristics and fine-tunes on a target dataset. This approach effectively resolves the architectural issue that arises when transferring meaningful information between the source and the target networks. To answer the second question, we carried out several ablation experiments. Based on the experimental results, a network trained from scratch performs as good as a network fine-tuned from a pre-trained network. However, we observed that pre-training the network has its own advantage in achieving better performances when deeper networks are required. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()