Deformable Convolution-Enhanced Hierarchical Transformer With Spectral-Spatial Cluster Attention for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Vision Transformer (ViT), known for capturing non-local features, is an effective tool for hyperspectral image classification (HSIC). However, ViT’s multi-head self-attention (MHSA) mechanism often struggles to balance local details and long-range relationships for complex high-dimensional data, leading to a loss in spectral-spatial information representation. To address this issue, we propose a deformable convolution-enhanced hierarchical Transformer with spectral-spatial cluster attention (SClusterFormer) for HSIC. The model incorporates a unique cluster attention mechanism that utilizes spectral angle similarity and Euclidean distance metrics to enhance the representation of fine-grained homogenous local details and improve discrimination of non-local structures in 3D HSI and 2D morphological data, respectively. Additionally, a dual-branch multiscale deformable convolution framework augmented with frequency-based spectral attention is designed to capture both the discrepancy patterns in high-frequency and overall trend of the spectral profile in low-frequency. Finally, we utilize a cross-feature pixel-level fusion module for collaborative cross-learning and fusion of the results from the dual-branch framework. Comprehensive experiments conducted on multiple HSIC datasets validate the superiority of our proposed SClusterFormer model, which outperforms existing methods. The source code of SClusterFormer is available at https://github.com/Fang666666/HSIC_SClusterFormer.