Rapid processing of multispectral scanner data using linear techniques.

Tests have been made to compare linear and quadratic techniques for processing multispectral scanner data. The tests have been limited to a few selected sets of agricultural data. Two aspects of processing were studied. The first, the selection of a subset of channels to be used in the decision function, was found to be faster by a factor of 50 when a linear method was used. Second, in recognition processing, our linear decision rule produced a lower error rate and utilized a larger number of channels for equal processing times. Nevertheless, when the criterion is lowest possible error rate, irregardless of processing time, the quadratic rule is preferable.