MULTI-APPROACH SATELLITE IMAGES FUSION BASED ON BLIND SOURCES SEPARATION

Abstract

The development of satellite image acquisition tools helped improving the extraction of information about natural scenes. In the proposed approach, we try to minimize imperfections accompanying the image interpretation process and to maximize useful information extracted from these images through the use of blind source separation (BSS) and fusion methods. In order to extract maximum information from multi-sensor images, we propose to use three algorithms of BSS that are FAST- ICA2D, JADE2D, and SOBI2D. Then by employing various fusion methods such as the probability, possibility, and evidence methods we can minimize both imprecision and uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach based on five main steps. The first step is to apply the three BSS algorithms to the satellites images; it results in obtaining a set of image sources representing each a facet of the land cover. A second step is to choose the image having the maximum of kurtosis and negentropy. After the BSS evaluation, we proceed to the training step using neural networks. The goal of this step is to provide learning regions which are useful for the fusion step. The next step consists in choosing the best adapted fusion method for the selected source images through a case-based reasoning (CBR) module. If the CBR module does not contain a case similar to the one we are seeking, we proceed to apply the three fusion methods. The evaluation of fusion methods is a necessary step for the learning process of our CBR.