An IHS and wavelet integrated approach to improve pan-sharpening visual quality of natural colour IKONOS and QuickBird images

Image fusion is an important tool in remote sensing, as many Earth observation satellites provide both high-resolution panchromatic and low-resolution multispectral images. To date, many image fusion techniques have been developed. However, the available algorithms can hardly produce a satisfactory fusion result for IKONOS and QuickBird images. Among the existing fusion algorithms, the IHS technique is the most widely used one, and the wavelet fusion is the most frequently discussed one in recent publications because of its advantages over other fusion techniques. But the colour distortion of these two techniques is often obvious, especially when IKONOS or QuickBird natural colour multispectral images are fused with its panchromatic images. This study presents a new fusion approach that integrates the advantages of both the IHS and the wavelet techniques to reduce the colour distortion of IKONOS and QuickBird fusion results. Different IKONOS and QuickBird images have been fused with this new approach. Visual and statistical analyses prove that the concept of the proposed IHS and wavelet integration is promising, and it does significantly improve the fusion quality compared to conventional IHS and wavelet fusion techniques.