A Survey on Image Fusion Techniques

Image fusion techniques have interest within the remote sensing community. The reason of this is that in most cases the new generation of remote sensors with very high spatial resolution acquires image datasets in two separate modes: the highest spatial resolution is obtained for panchromatic images (PAN) whereas multispectral information (MS) is associated with lower spatial resolution. Usually, the term ‘fusion’ gets several words to appear, such as merging, combination, synergy, integration and several others that express more or less the same meaning the concept have since it appeared in literature. Image fusion techniques can be classified into three categories depending on the stage at which fusion takes place; it is often divided into three levels, namely: pixel level, feature level and decision level of representation. This paper describes the concept of image fusion and its relevant methods.