Assessment of the information preservation of data fusion methods based on high spatial resolution remotely sensed imageries

Abstract

Spectral information and spatial information of high spatial resolution remotely sensed data are useful for natural disasters remote sensing application. At present, spatial resolution and spectral information of high spatial resolution remotely sensed images are contradictory factors. Image fusion methods can balance the contradictions between spatial resolution and spectral information. In this paper, three image fusion methods such as SFIM, WT and MBT have been employed to fuse either individual band multispectral images with panchromatic of FORMOSAT-2 in disaster area of Wenchuan earthquake, Sichuan province, China. Qualitative evaluation and quantitative assessment confirm that MBT can gain more texture information from panchromatic image and MBT is a good choice when image fusion is used in accurate ploting or locating the heavy disaster area and analyzing the loss of different disaster-bearing body using visual interpretation. While WT can preserve more spectral characteristic of FORMOSAT-2 multispectral images and WT will be a suitable image fusion method for disaster remote sensing applications when more spectral information is need.