Pixel based multifocus image fusion using Non linear filter

Abstract

In this paper we present a modified cross bilateral filter approach to fuse multifocus images by considering the edge information of the respective source images. Modified cross bilateral filter(MCBF) smooths the images while preserving its sharp edges. In proposed method, details of the source images are obtained by filtering the source images using MCBF and subtracting these filtered images with the respective source images. The details obtained are used to compute the weights and then the final fused image is obtained using fusion rule. The performance of proposed method is compared with the other existing methods and it is observed that the proposed method produces better results as compared to the other methods. The proposed method increases the quality of the final fused image significantly, both visually and quantitatively, by preserving all the relevant information of the source images.