An image fusion method based on object-oriented classification

In image fusion of different spatial resolution multispectral (MS) and panchromatic (PAN) images, a spectrally mixed MS pixel superimposes multiple mixed PAN pixels and multiple pure PAN pixels. This verifies that with increased spatial resolution in imaging, a low spatial resolution spectrally mixed subpixel may be unmixed to be a pure pixel. However, spectral unmixing of mixed MS subpixels is rarely considered in current remote-sensing image fusion methods, resulting in blurred fused images. In the image fusion method proposed in this article, such spectral unmixing is realized. In this method, the MS and PAN images are jointly segmented into image objects, image objects are classified to obtain a classification map of the PAN image and each MS subpixel is fused to be a pixel matching the class of the corresponding PAN pixel. Tested on spatially degraded IKONOS MS and PAN images with a significant spatial resolution ratio of 8:1, the fusion method offered fused images with high spectral quality and deblurred visualization.