Assessment of pan-sharpening methods applied to WorldView-2 image fusion

Various multispectral (MS) and panchromatic (PAN) fusion (or pan-sharpening) algorithms were developed to produce an enhanced MS image of high spatial resolution. Regarding the novelty in both the PAN and MS bands of the WV-2 imagery, the objective of this study is to assess the performance of nine state-of-the-art pan-sharpening methods for the WV-2 imagery, using both image quality indices and information indices that used for urban information extraction. The comparison of the four quality indices (RASE, ERGAS, SAM, and Q4) demonstrated that the HR method performed the best for the WV-2 MS and PAN images. However, the comparison of the four information indices showed that a higher quality at data level does not signify better information preservation for object recognition.