An Improved Ihs Fusion Method for Merging Multi-spectral and Panchromatic Images Considering Sensor Spectral Response

While many remote sensing and GIS applications require both the spatial resolution and spectral resolution be high, image fusion, or in other words, image sharpening, is a useful technique. To date, numerous image fusion techniques have been developed. However, some undesirable effects such as modified spectral signatures and resolution overinjection are produced. In this paper, a novel spectral preservation fusion method for remotely sensed images is presented by considering the physical characteristics of sensors. It is mainly based on the fast intensity-hue-saturation (IHS) transform but improved in two parts: the construction of intensity component and the injection method of detail information. In the proposed method, the spectral sensitivity of the multispectral and panchromatic sensors has been taken into account and all the multispectral bands can be fused at the same time. Experiments carried out on IKONOS, Landsat 7 ETM+ and EO-1 ALI images show that the proposed method can preserve spatial details and minimize spectral distortion.