Image Degradation for Quality Assessment of Pan-Sharpening Methods

Abstract: Wald’s protocol is the most widely accepted protocol to assess pan-sharpening algorithms. In particular, the synthesis property—which is usually validated on a reduced scale—is thought to be a necessary and sufficient condition of a success image fusion. Usually, the synthesis property is evaluated at a reduced resolution scale to take the original multispectral (MS) image as reference; thus, the image degradation method that is employed to produce reduced resolution images is crucial. In the past decade, the standard method has been to decimate the low-pass-filtered image where the filter is designed to match the modulation transfer function (MTF) of the sensor. The paper pointed out the deficiency of the method, and proposed a new image degradation method, referred to as method of spatial degradation for fusion validation (MSD4FV), which takes MTF compensation into account based on a simplified MTF model. The simulation results supported the implicit assumption of Wald’s protocol that image fusion performance is invariant among scales if the images have been properly degraded.