# Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning of Multispectral Foundation Models for Hyperspectral Image Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.15334 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15334/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [Efficiently Modeling Long Sequences with Structured State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00396/) (2021)
- [BitFit: Simple Parameter-efficient Fine-tuning for Transformer-based Masked Language-models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10199/) (2021)
- [SatMAE: Pre-training Transformers for Temporal and Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08051/) (2022)
- [LoRA+: Efficient Low Rank Adaptation of Large Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12354/) (2024)
- [Functional Map of the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07846/) (2017)
- [SpectralGPT: Spectral Remote Sensing Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07113/) (2023)
- [BigEarthNet: A Large-Scale Benchmark Archive For Remote Sensing Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06148/) (2019)
- [SkySense: A Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Foundation Model Towards Universal Interpretation for Earth Observation Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10115/) (2023)
- [SpectralFormer: Rethinking Hyperspectral Image Classification with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02988/) (2021)
- [KronA: Parameter Efficient Tuning with Kronecker Adapter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10650/) (2022)
- [Navigating Text-To-Image Customization: From LyCORIS Fine-Tuning to Model Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14859/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Transformers Pre-training for Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05419/) (2024)
- [HyperSIGMA: Hyperspectral Intelligence Comprehension Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11519/) (2024)
- [PANGAEA: A Global and Inclusive Benchmark for Geospatial Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04204/) (2024)
- [Vision Foundation Models in Remote Sensing: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03464/) (2024)
- [SpectralEarth: Training Hyperspectral Foundation Models at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08447/) (2024)
- [One for All: Toward Unified Foundation Models for Earth Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07527/) (2024)
- [Foundation Models -- A Panacea for Artificial Intelligence in Pathology?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.21264/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [MBTI: A Multi-Branch Efficient Fine-Tuning Framework for Hyperspectral Image Classification with Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12782/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Foundation models have achieved great success across diverse domains, including remote sensing (RS), thanks to their versatility and strong generalization abilities. However, most RS foundation models are designed for multispectral data, while hyperspectral imagery (HSI) - with its hundreds of spectral bands - remains less explored. Fine-tuning such models for downstream tasks is also challenging, often demanding considerable memory and storage. In this paper, we propose an efficient framework to fine-tune SpectralGPT, a multispectral foundation model, for hyperspectral image classification (HSIC). We explore several Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) methods, including Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA), Kronecker-based adaptation (KronA), Low-Rank Kronecker (LoKr), and the recent LoRA+, which uses distinct learning rates for low-rank adapters scaled by a factor lambda. Inspired by LoRA+, we introduce KronA+, which applies a similar mechanism to the Kronecker matrices. We evaluate our approach on five datasets from different sensors, showing competitive performance with state-of-the-art HSI models. Our full fine-tuning (FFT) setup for SpectralGPT even outperforms a dedicated hyperspectral foundation model on some datasets while requiring only a quarter of the training epochs. Under the same number of epochs, KronA+ reaches similar performance with far fewer trainable parameters - just 0.056 percent - and adds only approximately 0.2 megabytes of storage, making it the most effective PEFT method tested.