Pansharpening Using Guided Filtering to Improve the Spatial Clarity of VHR Satellite Imagery

Pansharpening algorithms are designed to enhance the spatial resolution of multispectral images using panchromatic images with high spatial resolutions. Panchromatic and multispectral images acquired from very high resolution (VHR) satellite sensors used as input data in the pansharpening process are characterized by spatial dissimilarities due to differences in their spectral/spatial characteristics and time lags between panchromatic and multispectral sensors. In this manuscript, a new pansharpening framework is proposed to improve the spatial clarity of VHR satellite imagery. This algorithm aims to remove the spatial dissimilarity between panchromatic and multispectral images using guided filtering (GF) and to generate the optimal local injection gains for pansharpening. First, we generate optimal multispectral images with spatial characteristics similar to those of panchromatic images using GF. Then, multiresolution analysis (MRA)-based pansharpening is applied using normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)-based optimal injection gains and spatial details obtained through GF. The algorithm is applied to Korea multipurpose satellite (KOMPSAT)-3/3A satellite sensor data, and the experimental results show that the pansharpened images obtained with the proposed algorithm exhibit a superior spatial quality and preserve spectral information better than those based on existing algorithms.