Recent progress in neural network research has demonstrated the usefulness of neural networks in a variety of areas. In this work, its application in the spatial resolution improvement of a remotely sensed low resolution thermal infrared image using high spatial resolution of visible and near-infrared images from Landsat TM sensor is described. The same work is done by an algebraic method. The tests developed are explained and examples of the results obtained in each test are shown and compared with each other. The error analysis is also carried out. Future improvements of these methods are evaluated.

The existing methods for the reconstruction of a super-resolution image from a sequence of undersampled and subpixel shifted images have to solve a large ill-condition equation group by approximately finding the pseudo-inverse matrix or performing many iterations to approach the solution. The former leads to a big burden of computation, and the latter causes the artifacts or noise to be stressed. In order to solve these problems, in this paper, we consider applying pyramid structure to the super-resolution of the image sequence and present a suitable pyramid framework, called Super-Resolution Image Pyramid (SRIP). Based on the imaging process of the image sequence, the proposed method divides a big back-projection into a series of different levels of small back-projections, thereby avoiding the above problems. As an example, the Iterative Back-Projection (IBP) suggested by Peleg is included in this pyramid framework. Computer simulations and error analyses are conducted and the effectiveness of the proposed framework is demonstrated. The image resolution can be improved better even in the case of severely undersampled images. In addition, the other general super-resolution methods can be easily included in this framework and done in parallel so as to meet the need of real-time processing.

The existing methods for reconstruction of a super-resolution image from undersampled and shubpixel shifted image sequence have two disadvantages. One is that most of them have to perform a lot of computations which lead to taking a lot of time and cannot meet the need of realtime processing. Another is that they cannot achieve satisfactory results in the case that the undersampling rate is too low. This paper considers applying a pyramid structure method to the super-resolution of the image sequence since it has some iterative optimization and parallel processing abilities. Based on the Iterative Back-Projection proposed by Peleg, a practical implementation, called Pyramid Iterative Back-Projection, is presented. The experiments and the error analysis show the effectiveness of this method. The image resolution can be improved better even in the case of severely undersampled images. In addition, the proposed method can be done in parallel and meet the need of real-time processing. The implementation framework of the method can be easily extended to the other general super-resolution methods.