Multifocus image fusion scheme using focused region detection and multiresolution

To solve the fusion problem of the multifocus images of the same scene, a novel algorithm based on focused region detection and multiresolution is proposed. In order to integrate the advantages of spatial domain-based fusion methods and transformed domain-based fusion methods, we use a technique of focused region detection and a new fusion method of multiscale transform (MST) to guide pixel combination. Firstly, the initial fused image is acquired with a novel multiresolution image fusion method. The pixels of the original images, which are similar to the corresponding initial fused image pixels, are considered to be located in the sharply focused regions. By this method, the initial focused regions can be determined, and the techniques of morphological opening and closing are employed for post-processing. Then the pixels within the focused regions in each source image are selected as the pixels of the fused image; meanwhile, the initial fused image pixels which are located at the focused border regions are retained as the pixels of the final fused image. The fused image is then obtained. The experimental results show that the proposed fusion approach is effective and performs better in fusing multi-focus images than some current methods.     

Multi-focus image fusion based on window empirical mode decomposition

In order to improve multi-focus image fusion quality, a novel fusion algorithm based on window empirical mode decomposition (WEMD) is proposed. This WEMD is an improved form of bidimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD), due to its decomposition process using the adding window principle, effectively resolving the signal concealment problem. We used WEMD for multi-focus image fusion, and formulated different fusion rules for bidimensional intrinsic mode function (BIMF) components and the residue component. For fusion of the BIMF components, the concept of the Sum-modified-Laplacian was used and a scheme based on the visual feature contrast adopted; when choosing the residue coefficients, a pixel value based on the local visibility was selected. We carried out four groups of multi-focus image fusion experiments and compared objective evaluation criteria with other three fusion methods. The experimental results show that the proposed fusion approach is effective and performs better at fusing multi-focus images than some traditional methods.     

基于人工鱼群优化分块的多聚焦图像融合

在多聚焦图像的融合过程中,对源图像采用固定大小的分块会导致融合后的图像存在块效应、边缘模糊甚至聚焦错误。为了克服此问题,提出了一种新的基于人工鱼群优化分块的多聚焦图像融合方法。首先,将源图像分解成互不重叠的方块,利用聚焦准则选取清晰度高的方块,将已选择的方块合并重构成初始融合图像。然后,利用改进的人工鱼群优化算法,根据一定的适应度值,寻找最优大小的分块方式,获得更优的融合图像。该方法与基于空域、频域及其他优化算法的融合方法进行了多个实验比较,结果表明,该方法获得的融合图像具有较好的客观质量和主观视觉感觉。     

Multi-Focus Image Fusion Method Based on Multi-Scale Decomposition of Information Complementary

Multi-focus image fusion is an important method used to combine the focused parts from source multi-focus images into a single full-focus image. Currently, to address the problem of multi-focus image fusion, the key is on how to accurately detect the focus regions, especially when the source images captured by cameras produce anisotropic blur and unregistration. This paper proposes a new multi-focus image fusion method based on the multi-scale decomposition of complementary information. Firstly, this method uses two groups of large-scale and small-scale decomposition schemes that are structurally complementary, to perform two-scale double-layer singular value decomposition of the image separately and obtain low-frequency and high-frequency components. Then, the low-frequency components are fused by a rule that integrates image local energy with edge energy. The high-frequency components are fused by the parameter-adaptive pulse-coupled neural network model (PA-PCNN), and according to the feature information contained in each decomposition layer of the high-frequency components, different detailed features are selected as the external stimulus input of the PA-PCNN. Finally, according to the two-scale decomposition of the source image that is structure complementary, and the fusion of high and low frequency components, two initial decision maps with complementary information are obtained. By refining the initial decision graph, the final fusion decision map is obtained to complete the image fusion. In addition, the proposed method is compared with 10 state-of-the-art approaches to verify its effectiveness. The experimental results show that the proposed method can more accurately distinguish the focused and non-focused areas in the case of image pre-registration and unregistration, and the subjective and objective evaluation indicators are slightly better than those of the existing methods.     

Multi-Focus Image Fusion Based on Multi-Scale Generative Adversarial Network

The methods based on the convolutional neural network have demonstrated its powerful information integration ability in image fusion. However, most of the existing methods based on neural networks are only applied to a part of the fusion process. In this paper, an end-to-end multi-focus image fusion method based on a multi-scale generative adversarial network (MsGAN) is proposed that makes full use of image features by a combination of multi-scale decomposition with a convolutional neural network. Extensive qualitative and quantitative experiments on the synthetic and Lytro datasets demonstrated the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed MsGAN compared to the state-of-the-art multi-focus image fusion methods.     

基于形态学4子带分解金字塔的图像融合

提出了一种基于数学形态学滤波的多分辨力图像融合。这种融合方法使用了形态学开闭运算构造了低通与高通滤波器,将原始图像分解为4子带图像金字塔和4子带方向衬比度图像金字塔。然后利用方向衬比度和区域标准差进行图像融合得到融合的4子带图像金字塔,最后应用子带图像重构得到融合图像。融合实验表明,该方法优于传统的形态学金字塔图像融合,衬比度金字塔图像融合和小波分解图像融合。     

Multi-focus image fusion using a bilateral gradient-based sharpness criterion

The aim of multi-focus image fusion is to combine multiple images with different focuses for enhancing the perception of a scene. The challenge is to how evaluate the local content (sharp) information of the input images. To tackle the above challenge, a new bilateral sharpness criterion is proposed to exploit both the strength and the phase coherence that are evaluated using the gradient information of the images. Then the proposed bilateral sharpness criterion is further exploited to perform weighted aggregation of multi-focus images. Extensive experimental results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed bilateral sharpness criterion outperforms conventional seven sharpness criterions.     

Multi-focus image fusion based on robust principal component analysis and pulse-coupled neural network

Multi-focus image fusion combines multiple source images with different focus points into one image, so that the resulting image appears all in-focus. In order to improve the accuracy of focused region detection and fusion quality, a novel multi-focus image fusion scheme based on robust principal component analysis (RPCA) and pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN) is proposed. In this method, registered source images are decomposed into principal component matrices and sparse matrices with RPCA decomposition. The local sparse features computed from the sparse matrix construct a composite feature space to represent the important information from the source images, which become inputs to PCNN to motivate the PCNN neurons. The focused regions of the source images are detected by the firing maps of PCNN and are integrated to construct the final, fused image. Experimental results demonstrate that the superiority of the proposed scheme over existing methods and highlight the expediency and suitability of the proposed method.     

基于Shearlet变换的自适应图像融合算法

针对多聚焦图像与多光谱和全色图像的成像特点,结合Shearlet变换具有较好的稀疏表示图像特征的性质,提出了一种新的图像融合规则.并基于此融合规则,提出了基于Shearlet变换的自适应图像融合算法.在多聚焦图像的融合算法中,分别对聚焦不同的图像进行Shearlet变换,并基于本文提出的融合规则,对分解后的高低频系数进行融合处理. 通过与多种算法的比较实验证明了本文提出的算法融合的图像具有更高的清晰度和更加丰富的细节信息.在多光谱和全色图像的融合处理中,提出了一种基于Shearlet变换与HSV变换相结合的图像融合方法.该算法首先对多光谱图像作HSV变换,将得到的V分量与全色图像进行Shearlet分解与融合,在融合过程中对分解系数选用特定的融合准则进行融合,最后将融合生成新的分量与H、S分量进行HSV逆变换产生新的RGB融合图像. 该算法在空间分辨率和光谱特性两方面达到了良好的平衡,融合后的图像在减少光谱失真的同时,有效增强了空间分辨率. 仿真实验证明,本文算法融合的图像与传统的多光谱和全色图像融合算法相比,具有更佳的融合性能和视觉效果.     

A multi-focus image fusion algorithm based on an improved dual-channel PCNN in NSCT domain

This paper presents a multi-focus image fusion algorithm based on dual-channel PCNN in NSCT domain. The fusion algorithm based on multi-scale transform is likely to produce the pseudo-Gibbs effects and it is not effective to fuse the dim or partial bright images. To solve these problems, this algorithm will get a number of different frequency sub-image of the two images by using the NSCT transform, the selection principles of different subband coefficients obtained by the NSCT decomposition are discussed in detail, and the images are fused based on the improved dual-channel PCNN in order to determine the band-pass sub-band coefficient, at last fused image is obtained by using the inverse NSCT transform. Fusion rules based on dual-channel PCNN are used to solve the complexity of the PCNN parameter settings and long computing time problems. The experimental results show that the algorithm has overcome the defects of the traditional multi-focus image fusion algorithm and improved the fusion effect.     

Multiscale top-hat selection transform based infrared and visual image fusion with emphasis on extracting regions of interest

To effectively combine regions of interest in original infrared and visual images, an adaptively weighted infrared and visual image fusion algorithm is developed based on the multiscale top-hat selection transform. First, the multiscale top-hat selection transform using multiscale structuring elements with increasing sizes is discussed. Second, the image regions of the original infrared and visual images at each scale are extracted by using the multiscale top-hat selection transform. Third, the final fusion regions are constructed from the extracted multiscale image regions. Finally, the final fusion regions are combined into a base image calculated from the original images to form the final fusion result. The combination of the final fusion regions uses the adaptive weight strategy, and the weights are adaptively obtained based on the importance of the extracted features. In the paper, we compare seven image fusion methods: wavelet pyramid algorithm (WP), shift invariant discrete wavelet transform algorithm (SIDWT), Laplacian pyramid algorithm (LP), morphological pyramid algorithm (MP), multiscale morphology based algorithm (MSM), center-surround top-hat transform based algorithm (CSTHT), and the proposed multiscale top-hat selection transform based algorithm. These seven methods are compared over five different publicly available image sets using three metrics of spatial frequency, mean gradient, and Q. The results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and may be useful for the applications related to the infrared and visual image fusion.     

Image fusion through local feature extraction by using multi-scale top-hat by reconstruction operators

The purpose of image fusion is to combine useful image features of different original images into the final fusion image, which will produce one useful result image for different applications. One of the main difficulties of image fusion is extracting useful image features of different original images. In some cases, useful image features are local image features of the whole image. To efficiently extract local image features and produce an efficient fusion result, an image fusion algorithm based on the extracted local image features by using multi-scale top-hat by reconstruction operators is proposed in this paper. Firstly, multi-scale local feature extraction using multi-scale top-hat by reconstruction operators is discussed. Then, based on the extracted multi-scale local features of different original images, the useful image features for image fusion are constructed. Finally, the constructed useful image features for image fusion are combined into the final fusion image. Experimental results on different types of images show that, the proposed algorithm performs well for image fusion.     

A comparison of criterion functions for fusion of multi-focus noisy images

In many practical applications, images are distorted by impulsive noise (IN) produced by image sensors and/or communication channels. This noise may cause miscalculation of sharpness values which, in turn, introduce significant errors in the results of image fusion. In this paper, conventional focus measures and frequency selective weighted median filter (FSWM) are evaluated for fusion of multi-focus images in the presence of IN. FSWM is also compared with other multi-focus fusion methods such as Laplacian Pyramid and wavelet. Experimental results are presented for several sets of images and the results show that FSWM can provide better performance than other focus measures and methods.     

Multi-focus image fusion algorithm based on compound PCNN in Surfacelet domain

In order to effectively retain details and suppress noise, a multi-focus image fusion method based on Surfacelet transform and compound PCNN is proposed. Surfacelet transform is a powerful multi-resolution analysis tool which is able to decompose the original image into a number of different frequency band sub-images, compound PCNN model is a combined model of PCNN and dual-channel PCNN which is to select the fusion coefficients from the decomposed coefficients, the Local sum-modified-Laplacian (LSML) is selected as external stimulus of compound PCNN, fusion coefficients are decided by compound PCNN. The experimental results show that the new method has a good performance, fusion image has more texture details and it is more similar to the original images, the objective evaluation indexes show that this method is superior to the traditional image fusion methods.     

Multifocus image fusion and denoising scheme based on homogeneity similarity

A novel image fusion algorithm based on homogeneity similarity is proposed in this paper, aiming at solving the fusion problem of clean and noisy multifocus images. Firstly, the initial fused image is acquired with one multiresolution image fusion method. The pixels of the source images, which are similar to the corresponding initial fused image pixels, are considered to be located in the sharply focused regions. By this method, the initial focused regions are determined. In order to improve the fusion performance, morphological opening and closing are employed for post-processing. Secondly, the homogeneity similarity is introduced and used to fuse the clean and noisy multifocus images. Finally, the fused image is obtained by weighting the neighborhood pixels of the point of source images which are located at the focused region. Experimental results demonstrate that, for the clean multifocus image fusion, the proposed method performs better than some popular image fusion methods in both subjective and objective qualities. Furthermore, it can simultaneously resolve the image restoration and fusion problem when the source multifocus images are corrupted by the Gaussian white noise, and can also provide better performance than the conventional methods.     

基于图像块能量梯度的多聚焦图像融合

针对多聚焦图像,提出一种基于图像分块的融合方法。将源图像分为大小相同数量相等的子块,采用能量梯度算子作为对焦评价函数,计算各个图像子块能量梯度匹配度,设置匹配度阈值分离出源图像中的清晰区域。源图像中的清晰区域直接作为融合图像相应的区域,其它区域的处理中,构造与相应子块能量梯度大小相关的图像序列,以及像素点到各个子块中心距离相关的融合函数,然后用融合函数对图像序列融合。实验结果表明该方法有效性和合理性。     

一种基于清晰度计算的NSCT域多聚焦图像融合算法

针对多聚焦图像的特点．提出了一种基于清晰度计算的非抽样轮廓波变换（Non-Subsampied Contourlet’Transform,NSCT）域多聚焦图像融合算法。该算法首先对源图像进行NSCT分解．以此克服传统Contourlet变换不具平移不变性的缺点。在分析光学成像中散焦表现形式的基础上．对分解后的低频子带和高频方向子带分别以“邻域梯度”及“合成邻域模值”作为清晰度指标。采用自适应选择法实现对多聚焦图像的融合处理。实验结果表明,该方法不仅能有效融合图像中的“伪影”和“振铃效应”．视觉效果明显优于传统小波和Contourlet方法,且融合图像的熵、交叉熵及均方根交叉熵等客观评价指标也有明显提高。     

基于非抽样剪切波的加权区域图像融合

以提升遥感图像和多聚焦图像的融合精度为目的,结合非下采样剪切波变换（NSST）可以捕捉图像的细节特征,提出了一种NSST和加权区域特性的图像融合方法。利用非下采样剪切波变换对源图像进行多尺度、多方向分解,得到低频子带和高频子带,低频子带系数采用改进梯度投影的非负矩阵分解（NMF）,高频子带系数采用加权区域能量和区域方差相结合的融合策略,然后应用非下采样剪切波的逆变换得到融合的图像。实验结果表明:该方法从主观视觉方面很好地保留了多幅图像的有用信息,给出该方法与其他融合算法在客观评价指标应用信息熵EN、互信息MI和加权边缘信息量QAB/F的比较结果 。     

Decision-based adaptive morphological filter for fixed-value impulse noise removal

A novel adaptive switching morphological filter for removing fixed-value impulse noise is proposed. The proposed filter firstly identifies noise pixels using the two-stage morphological noise detector, in which the initial noise detection is used to identify the noise candidates based on the morphological gradients and the refined noise detection based on the combined conditional morphological operators is adopted to further classify the noise candidates as the noise pixels or noise-free pixels. Then the detected noise pixels are removed by the adaptive morphological filter using the conditional rank-order morphological operators while the noise-free pixels are left unaltered. Extensive simulations show that the proposed filter outperforms a number of existing switching-based filters because of its excellent performance in terms of noise detection and image restoration.     

具有紧支撑正交非张量积小波的图像融合

提出了基于一种新的小波——具有紧支撑、正交性、伸缩矩阵为[^2 0 ^0 2]的非张量积小波的图像融合方法。首先根据非张量积小波理论,利用Daubechies构造的单变量滤波器构造出基于四通道的不可分的小波滤波器组,用此滤波器组对参加融合的图像进行分解,然后对低频部分采用取均值、高频部分采用系数绝对值取大的融合算法对分解子图进行融合,最后重构。并采用熵、交叉熵、互信息、均方根误差和峰值信噪比等指标对该方法进行了客观评价。对可见光图像与红外图像、远红外图像与近红外图像、遥感图像、多聚焦图像和其它多类图像的融合实验结果证明本方法有较好的融合效果,其融合性能与采用同样融合算法的张量积db2小波的融合方法的融合性能相当。