A Pan-sharpening Method Based on Guided Image Filtering: a Case Study over Gf-2 Imagery

The GaoFen-2 satellite (GF-2) is a self-developed civil optical remote sensing satellite of China, which is also the first satellite with the resolution of being superior to 1 meter in China. In this paper, we propose a pan-sharpening method based on guided image filtering, apply it to the GF-2 images and compare the performance to state-of-the-art methods. Firstly, a simulated low-resolution panchromatic band is yielded; thereafter, the resampled multispectral image is taken as the guidance image to filter the simulated low resolution panchromatic Pan image, and extracting the spatial information from the original Pan image; finally, the pan-sharpened result is synthesized by injecting the spatial details into each band of the resampled MS image according to proper weights. Three groups of GF-2 images acquired from water body, urban and cropland areas have been selected for assessments. Four evaluation metrics are employed for quantitative assessment. The experimental results show that, for GF-2 imagery acquired over different scenes, the proposed method can not only achieve high spectral fidelity, but also enhance the spatial details.