A New Intensity-Hue-Saturation Fusion Technique with Color Distortion Reduction for IKONOS Imagery

International audienceAmong the existing image fusion algorithms, Intensity- Hue-Saturation (IHS) technique is the most widely used one. When the IHS method is used for IKONOS imagery, there is a significant color distortion, due mainly to the range of wavelengths in an IKONOS Pan image. Based on the fact that the grey values of Pan in the green vegetated regions are far larger than the grey values of intensity (I) and that vegetation ppears of relatively high reflectance in Near Infrared (NIR) and Pan bands, we propose a new technique to solve this problem. This approach makes se of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to identify the vegetation area and then enhances it in the green (G) band by using the red (R) and the NIR bands. We obtain an intensity image with grey values comparable to the Pan's grey values. Hence the color distortion in the fused image is reduced. Visual and statistical analyses prove that the concept of the proposed method is promising, and it significantly improves the fusion quality compared to conventional IHS technique