Long-wave infrared remote sensing data spatial resolution enhancement using modulation transfer function fusion approach

Abstract

Remote sensing imagery in the long-wave infrared band represents land surface thermal radiance which is crucial for many studies related to urbanization development, geological activity, climate and landscape changes, etc. The main problem of long-wave infrared data application is insufficient spatial resolution relative to visible and short-wave infrared data. For detailed surface temperature mapping, which can be derived from the long-wave infrared data the resolution enhancement needs to be applied. The resolution enhancement technique based on the imaging system’s modulation transfer functions (MTF) processing is proposed. As a basic, the high-resolution visible band image has been taken. Fusion of the low-resolution (longwave infrared) and the high-resolution image (visible) was conducted by inverse filtering within the frequency domain. The more sharpened land surface temperature (LST) distribution without technical improvements of imaging systems is provided.