A Hybrid Pansharpening Algorithm of VHR Satellite Images that Employs Injection Gains Based on NDVI to Reduce Computational Costs

The objective of this work is to develop an algorithm for pansharpening of very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery that reduces the spectral distortion of the pansharpened images and enhances their spatial clarity with minimal computational costs. In order to minimize the spectral distortion and computational costs, the global injection gain is transformed to the local injection gains using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), on the assumption that the NDVI are positively or negatively correlated with local injection gains obtained from each band of the satellite data. In addition, the local injection gains are then applied in the hybrid pansharpening algorithm to optimize the spatial clarity. In particular, in the proposed algorithm, a synthetic intensity image is determined using block-based linear regression. In experiments using imagery collected by various satellites, such as KOrea Multi-Purpose SATellite-3 (KOMPSAT-3), KOMPSAT-3A and WorldView-3, the pansharpened results obtained using the proposed Hybrid Pansharpening algorithm using NDVI and based on the spectral mode (HP-NDVIspectral) provide a better representation of the values of the Erreur Relative Globale Adimensionnelle de Synthese (ERGAS), the spectral angle mapper (SAM) and the Q4/Q8 than those produced by existing pansharpening algorithms. In terms of spatial quality, the pansharpened images obtained using the proposed pansharpening algorithm based on the spatial mode (HP-NDVIspatial) have higher average gradient (AG) values than those obtained using existing pansharpening methods. In addition, the computational complexity of our method is similar to that of a pansharpening algorithm that is based on a global injection model, although our methodology has characteristics that are similar to those of a local injection gain-based model that has a very high computational cost. Thus, the quantitative and qualitative assessments presented here indicate that the proposed algorithm can be utilized in various applications that employ spectral information or require high spatial clarity.