Assessment of pan-sharpened very high-resolution WorldView-2 images

Abstract

The fusion of multispectral (MS) images with high spatial resolution panchromatic (pan) images compensates the trade-off between spatial and spectral resolutions. The performance of fusion algorithms for different sensors is an active area of research. Therefore, with the availability of new very high-resolution (VHR) sensors, it becomes customary to evaluate the applicability of existing fusion techniques. In this study, we focused on the WorldView-2 (WV2) spaceborne sensor, which captures data in eight MS (2 m spatial resolution) bands and one pan (0.5 m spatial resolution) band. We compared and assessed 12 fusion techniques, namely Brovey transform (BT), Ehlers, Gram–Schimdt (GS), hyperspherical colour sphere (HCS), high-pass filter (HPF), modified intensity hue saturation (ModIHS), Multiplicative, PANSHARP, PANSHARP2, principal component (PC), and wavelet (IHS and PC)-based methods. To measure the quality of fused products, qualitative and quantitative methods were used. In qualitative methods, visual analysis of different colour composites was carried out. In quantitative methods, band-wise eight quality metrics including the required processing time and controlling parameters were reported. For overall image quality assessment, it is necessary to combine the values of different quality metrics. Therefore, a mean observation score based on these values was calculated to rank the fusion methods. It was observed that the HPF and PANSHARP methods produced the most visually appealing images, whereas quantitative values indicated that HCS, HPF, and PANSHARP methods performed better than other methods. Combining the results of quantitative and qualitative analyses, it was found that PANSHARP and HPF methods are superior to other methods in preserving both spatial and spectral details.