Multifocus noisy image fusion using contourlet transform

Abstract

Image fusion is a challenging area of research with a variety of applications. The process of image fusion collects information from different sources and combines them in a single composite image. The composite fused image can better describe the scene than any of the source images. In this paper, we have proposed a method for noisy image fusion in contourlet domain. The proposed method works equally well for fusion of noise free images. Contourlet transform is a multiscale, multidirectional transform with various aspect ratios. These properties make it more suitable for image fusion than other conventional transforms. In the proposed work, the fusion algorithm is combined with a denoising algorithm to reverse the effect of noise. In the proposed method, we have used a level dependent threshold that is based on standard deviation of contourlet coefficients, mean and median of the absolute contourlet coefficients. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method performs well in the presence of different types of noise. Performance of the proposed method is compared with principal components analysis and sharp fusion based methods as well as other fusion methods based on variants of wavelet transform like dual tree complex wavelet transform, discrete wavelet transform, lifting wavelet transform, multiwavelet transform, stationary wavelet transform and pyramid transform using six standard quantitative quality metrics (entropy, standard deviation, edge strength, fusion factor, sharpness and peak signal to noise ratio). The combined qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the experimental results shows that the proposed method performs better than other methods.

Keywords:

• Contourlet transform
• Denoising
• Image fusion
• Maximum selection fusion
• Threshold