# Dynamic Memory Transformer for Hyperspectral Image Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13242 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13242/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Three dimensional Deep Learning approach for remote sensing image classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05824/) (2018)
- [Hyperspectral Image Classification-Traditional to Deep Models: A Survey for Future Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06116/) (2021)
- [A Comprehensive Survey for Hyperspectral Image Classification: The Evolution from Conventional to Transformers and Mamba Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14955/) (2024)
- [Pyramid Hierarchical Transformer for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14945/) (2024)
- [WaveMamba: Spatial-Spectral Wavelet Mamba for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01231/) (2024)
- [Multi-head Spatial-Spectral Mamba for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01224/) (2024)
- [Transformers Fusion across Disjoint Samples for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01095/) (2024)
- [Attention Mechanism Meets with Hybrid Dense Network for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01001/) (2022)
- [EnergyFormer: Energy Attention with Fourier Embedding for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08239/) (2025)
- [Transformer-Driven Active Transfer Learning for Cross-Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18115/) (2024)
- [DiffFormer: a Differential Spatial-Spectral Transformer for Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17350/) (2024)
- [Investigation of Hierarchical Spectral Vision Transformer Architecture for Classification of Hyperspectral Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09244/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Hyperspectral image (HSI) classification (HSIC) requires effective modeling of complex spatial-spectral dependencies under limited labeled data and high dimensionality. While transformer-based models have shown strong capability in capturing long-range contextual information, they often introduce redundant attention patterns, which limits their effectiveness for fine-grained HSI analysis. To address these challenges, this paper proposes MemFormer, a lightweight transformer architecture for HSIC that incorporates a dynamic memory-enhanced attention mechanism. The proposed design augments multi-head self-attention with a compact global memory module that progressively aggregates contextual information across layers, enabling efficient modeling of long-range dependencies while reducing attention redundancy. In addition, a Spatial-Spectral Positional Embedding (SSPE) is used to jointly encode spatial continuity and spectral ordering, providing structurally consistent representations without relying on convolution-based positional encodings. Extensive experiments conducted on three benchmark hyperspectral datasets, including Indian Pines, WHU-Hi-HanChuan, and WHU-Hi-HongHu, demonstrate that MemFormer achieves superior classification performance compared to representative convolutional, hybrid, and transformer-based methods. On the Indian Pines dataset, MemFormer attains an overall accuracy of up to 99.55%, average accuracy of 99.38%, and a kappa coefficient of 99.49%, highlighting its effectiveness and efficiency for HSIC.