Spatial Sharpening of KOMPSAT-3A MIR Images Using Optimal Scaling Factor

This paper present efficient methods for merging KOMPSAT-3A (Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite) medium wave Infrared (MIR) and panchromatic (PAN) images. Spatial sharpening techniques have been developed to create an image with both high spatial and high spectral resolution by combining the desired qualities of a PAN image with high spatial and low spectral resolution and an MS/MIR image with low spatial and high spectral resolution. The proposed methods can extract an optimal scaling factor, and uses the tactics of appropriately controlling the balance between the spatial and spectral resolutions. KOMPSAT-3A PAN and MIR images were used to test and evaluate the performance of the proposed methods. A qualitative assessment were performed using the image quality index (Q4), the cross correlation index (CC) and the relative global dimensional synthesis error (Spectral/Spatial ERGAS). These tests indicate that the proposed methods preserve the spectral and spatial characteristics of the original MIR and PAN images. Visual analysis reveals that the spectral and spatial information derived from the proposed methods were well retained in the test images. A comparison of the results of the proposed methods with those obtained from applying existing ones such as the Multi Sensor Fusion (MSF) technique or the Guide Filter Based Fusion (GF) show the efficiency of the new fusion process to be superior to the one of the others. The results showed a significant improvement in fusion capability for KOMPSAT-3A MIR imagery.