A fusion method for multispectral and panchromatic images based on HSI and Contourlet transformation

Fusion of multispectral and panchromatic remote sensing images is a procedure to obtain spatial resolution and quality of the panchromatic image as well as preserving spectral information of the multispectral image. In this paper, we present a new fusion method based on HSI (Hue-Saturation-Intensity) and Contourlet transform. First, we convert the multispectral image from the RGB color space into the HSI color space. Then, by applying Contourlet transform to the panchromatic image and the I component of the multispectral image, we utilize an improved fusion rule based on PCA for the low-frequency sub-images, and engage the maximum fusion rule for the high-frequency sub-images. Finally, a fusion image is obtained by the inverse HSI transform. The experimental results show that the proposed fusion method not only enhances the spatial resolution of the fusion image, but also preserves the spectral information of the original multispectral image.