A novel image-fusion method based on the un-mixing of mixed MS sub-pixels regarding high-resolution DSM

Abstract

ABSTRACTA major reason for the spectral distortions of fused images generated by current image-fusion methods is that the fused versions of mixed multispectral (MS) sub-pixels (MSPs) corresponding to panchromatic (PAN) pure pixels remain mixed. The MSPs can be un-mixed spectrally to pure pixels having the same land cover classes in a fine classification map during the fusion process. Since it is difficult to produce such a land cover classification map using only MS and PAN images, a Digital Surface Model (DSM) derived from airborne Light Detection And Ranging data were employed in this study to facilitate the classification. In a novel fusion method proposed in this paper, MSPs near and across boundaries between vegetation and non-vegetation are identified using MS, PAN, and normalized Digital Surface Model (nDSM). The identified MSPs then are fused to pure pixels with respect to the corresponding land cover class in the classification map. In a test on WorldView-2 images over an urban area and the corresponding nDSM, the fused image generated by the proposed method was visually and quantitatively compared with fused images obtained using common image-fusion methods. The fused images generated by the proposed method yielded minimal spectral distortions and sharpened boundaries between vegetation and non-vegetation.