An area-based image fusion scheme for the integration of SAR and optical satellite imagery

The task of enhancing the perception of a scene by combining information captured from different image sensors is usually known as multisensor image fusion. This paper presents an area-based image fusion algorithm to merge SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and optical images. The co-registration of the two images is first conducted using the proposed registration method prior to image fusion. Segmentation into active and inactive areas is then performed on the SAR texture image for selective injection of the SAR image into the panchromatic (PAN) image. An integrated image based on these two images is generated by the novel area-based fusion scheme, which imposes different fusion rules for each segmented area. Finally, this image is fused into a multispectral (MS) image through the hybrid pansharpening method proposed in previous research. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method shows better performance than other fusion algorithms and has the potential to be applied to the multisensor fusion of SAR and optical images.