An Image Fusion Algorithm based on Modified Contourlet Transform

Abstract

Multi-focus image fusion has established itself as a useful tool for reducing the amount of raw data and it aims at overcoming imaging cameras’ finite depth of f ield by combining information from multiple images with the same scene. Most of existing fusion algorithms use the method of multi-scale decompositions (MSD) to fuse the s ource images. MSD-based fusion algorithms provide much better performance than the conventional fusion methods .In the image fusion algorithm based on multi-scale decomposition, how to make full use of the characteristics of coefficients to fuse images is a key problem.This paper proposed a modified contourlet transform(MCT) based on wavelets and nonsubsampled directional filter banks(NSDFB). The image is decomposed in wavelet domain,and each highpass subband of wavelets is further decomposed into multiple directional subbands by using NSDFB. The MCT has the important features of directionality and translation invariance. Furthermore, the MCT and a novel region energy strategy are exploited to perform image fusion algorithm. simulation results shows that the proposed method can the fusion results visually and also improve in objective evaluating parameters.