A regularised model-based pan-sharpening method for remote sensing images with local dissimilarities

Combining the spectral information of a low-resolution multispectral (LRMS) image and the spatial information of a high-resolution panchromatic (HRP) image to generate a high-resolution multispectral (HRMS) image has become an important and interesting issue. Local dissimilarities between the LRMS image and the HRP image affect the performance of the pan-sharpening technique. This paper presents a model-based pan-sharpening method with global and nonlocal spatial similarity regularisers to reduce the effects of the local dissimilarities. The degraded model relating the LRMS image to the unknown HRMS image is employed as the data-fitting term to keep spectral fidelity. Two spatial similarity constraints are utilized to further enhance the spatial resolution of the unknown HRMS image. The first regularisation term is under the assumption that the high-pass component of each HRMS band has the similar geometry structure with the adjusted high-pass component of the HRP image. A modulation matrix is constructed to reduce the contrast differences. Moreover, nonlocal self-similarity characteristic of the high-pass component extracted from each HRMS band is considered as another regulariser, which is an effective structural prior to improve the local spatial quality of the HRMS image. The weights of nonlocal similarity model are learned from the high-pass component of available HRP image. Experiments conducted on QuickBird and IKONOS data validate that the proposed pan-sharpening method can achieve better performance compared with several traditional and state-of-the-art pan-sharpening algorithms in terms of quantitative evaluation and visual analysis.