An algorithm of remote sensing image fusion based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform

This paper presents a remote sensing image fusion method based on multiresolution analysis (MRA). The lower spatial resolution multispectral (MS) images are sharpened by injecting high frequency components which are extracted from higher spatial resolution panchromatic (Pan) images by using nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT). In order to improve the visual quality of fusion images, this paper proposes a fusion rule based on human visual characteristics. Experiments are carried out on images acquired by the SPOT-5 satellite system. Firstly, MS images are resampled to finer scale as same as Pan images and are converted from RGB format to HSV format. Secondly, the value (V) band of HSV format MS image is sharpened by the Pan image by means of NSCT. Finally, fusion quality assessments among the proposed method and other commonly used remote sensing image fusion methods reveal that both the visual and parametric quality of the proposed method are better than other methods.