Stationary Wavelet Transform based Image Fusion using fusion rules

Abstract

Multifocus image fusion is a current research topic in the area of image processing for visual sensor networks. Discrete wavelet transform based fusion algorithms suffer from unintended effects like smoothing of edges, loss of contrast and artifacts. To overcome these problems, Stationary Wavelet Transform based algorithm using fusion-rules is proposed and applied to multifocus images. Stationary Wavelet Transform well preserves the edges and avoid artifacts with its shift-invariance property. Entropy and spatial frequency based fusion rules in this work can effectively characterize the intensity variations in an image there by loss of contrast is minimized. Simulation results show that the proposed method can amply preserve the edges and also avoid artifacts with no loss of contrast.