Remote Sensing, Vol. 9, Pages 639: A Method of Panchromatic Image Modification for Satellite Imagery Data Fusion (Remote Sensing)

The standard ratio of spatial resolution between bands for high resolution satellites is 1:4, which is typical when combining images obtained from the same sensor. However, the cost of simultaneously purchasing a set of panchromatic and multispectral images is still relatively high. There is therefore a need to develop methods of data fusion of very high resolution panchromatic imagery with low-cost multispectral data (e.g., Landsat). Combining high resolution images with low resolution images broadens the scope of use of satellite data, however, it is also accompanied by the problem of a large ratio between spatial resolutions, which results in large spectral distortions in the merged images. The authors propose a modification of the panchromatic image in such a way that it includes the spectral and spatial information from both the panchromatic and multispectral images to improve the quality of spectral data integration. This fusion is done based on a weighted average. The weight is determined using a coefficient, which determines the ratio of the amount of information contained in the corresponding pixels of the integrated images. The effectiveness of the author`s algorithm had been tested for six of the most popular fusion methods. The proposed methodology is ideal mainly for statistical and numerical methods, especially Principal Component Analysis and Gram-Schmidt. The author`s algorithm makes it possible to lower the root mean square error by up to 20% for the Principal Component Analysis. The spectral quality was also increased, especially for the spectral bands extending beyond the panchromatic image, where the correlation rose by 18% for the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization.