Remote-sensing image fusion using sparse representation with sub-dictionaries

Remote-sensing image fusion aims to obtain a multispectral (MS) image with a high spatial resolution, which integrates spatial information from the panchromatic (Pan) image and with spectral information from the MS image. Sparse representation (SR) has been recently used in remote-sensing image fusion method, and can obtain superior results to many traditional methods. However, the main obstacle is that the dictionary is generated from high resolution MS images (HRMS), which are difficult to acquire. In this article, a new SR-based remote-sensing image fusion method with sub-dictionaries is proposed. The image fusion problem is transformed into a restoration problem under the observation model with the sparsity constraint, so the fused HRMS image can then be reconstructed by a trained dictionary. The proposed dictionary for image fusion is composed of several sub-dictionaries, each of which is constructed from a source Pan image and its corresponding MS images. Therefore, the dictionary can be constructed without other HRMS images. The fusion results from QuickBird and IKONOS remote-sensing images demonstrate that the proposed method gives higher spatial resolution and less spectral distortion compared with other widely used and the state-of-the-art remote-sensing image fusion methods.