A new quantitative metric is proposed to objectively evaluate the quality of fused imagery. The measured value of the proposed metric is used as feedback to a fusion algorithm such that the image quality of the fused image can potentially be improved. This new metric, called the ratio of spatial frequency error (rSFe), is derived from the definition of a previous measure termed "spatial frequency" (SF) that reflects local intensity variation. In this work, (1) the concept of SF is first extended by adding two diagonal SFs, then, (2) a reference SF (SFR) is computed from the input images, and finally, (3) the error SF (SFE) (subtracting the fusion SF from the reference SF), or the ratio of SF error (rSFe = SFE/SFR), is used as a fusion quality metric. The rSFe (which can be positive or negative) indicates the direction of fusion error-over-fused (if rSFe > 0) or under-fused (if rSFe < 0). Thus, the rSFe value can be back propagated to the fusion algorithm (BP fusion), thereby directing further parameter adjustments in order to achieve a better-fused image. The accuracy of the rSFe is verified with other quantitative measurements such as the root mean square error (RMSE) and the image quality index (IQI), as well as with a qualitative perceptual evaluation based on a standard psychophysical paradigm. An advanced wavelet transform (aDWT) method that incorporates principal component analysis (PCA) and morphological processing into a regular DWT fusion algorithm is implemented with two adjustable parameters-the number of levels of DWT decompositions and the length of the selected wavelet. Results with aDWT were compared to those with a regular DWT and with a Laplacian pyramid. After analyzing several inhomogeneous image groups, experimental results showed that the proposed metric, rSFe, is consistent with RMSE and IQI, and is especially powerful and efficient for realizing the iterative BP fusion in order to achieve a better image quality. Human perceptual assessment was measured and found to strongly support the assertion that the aDWT offers a significant improvement over the DWT and pyramid methods. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
