Direct fusion of geostationary meteorological satellite visible and infrared images based on thermal physical properties.

Lei Han,Buzha Wulie,Yiling Yang,Hongqing Wang

doi:10.3390/s150100703

Abstract

This study investigated a novel method of fusing visible (VIS) and infrared (IR) images with the major objective of obtaining higher-resolution IR images. Most existing image fusion methods focus only on visual performance and many fail to consider the thermal physical properties of the IR images, leading to spectral distortion in the fused image. In this study, we use the IR thermal physical property to correct the VIS image directly. Specifically, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law is used as a strong constraint to modulate the VIS image, such that the fused result shows a similar level of regional thermal energy as the original IR image, while preserving the high-resolution structural features from the VIS image. This method is an improvement over our previous study, which required VIS-IR multi-wavelet fusion before the same correction method was applied. The results of experiments show that applying this correction to the VIS image directly without multi-resolution analysis (MRA) processing achieves similar results, but is considerably more computationally efficient, thereby providing a new perspective on VIS and IR image fusion.

Highlights

Geostationary meteorological satellites often collect data for both infrared (IR) and visible (VIS)channels
The proposed algorithm was tested using data obtained by the Multifunctional Transport Satellite (MTSAT) which is operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
Because the fusion method in this paper is based on thermal radiation, we introduce two new parameters: the average thermal energy deviation (AVGD), and the root-mean-square thermal energy deviation (RMSD)

Summary

Introduction

Geostationary meteorological satellites often collect data for both infrared (IR) and visible (VIS). The IR data of geostationary meteorological satellites are of great importance in research and practical applications. They reflect the distribution of temperatures on the Earth’s surface, and are used widely in weather forecasting, numerical weather prediction, and climate modeling. The infrared spatial resolution is relatively low. The VIS data have considerably higher resolution, but do not reflect the thermal dynamics of the Earth and atmosphere. The fusion of IR and VIS data into one coherent image provides a method of improving the infrared spatial resolution

Methods

Results

Conclusion