Image fusion scheme based on nonsubsampled contourlet and block-based cosine transform

A kind of nonsubsampled contourlet and block-based cosine transform (NSCBCT) is developed, and its application in image fusion is studied in this paper. The construction of filtering banks is based on the nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) and block-based discrete cosine transform (B-DCT). We combine NSCT and B-DCT to design filters that lead to NSCBCT with better singularity representation than either of them in isolation. A design framework based on the hybrid approach is proposed, which allows for the fast implementation based on NSCT and B-DCT respectively. In addition, a new image fusion scheme based on NSCBCT for multispectral and panchromatic satellite images is proposed. Firstly, because it adopts NSCT, the fused satellite images have higher spatial resolution than those based on wavelets. Secondly, based on the localized high frequency information provided by B-DCT, the proposed fusion scheme can reduce the spectral distortion of the fused image further. Experimental results show that the proposed fusion method is able to increase the spatial resolution and reduce the spectral distortion of the fused image at the same time.