Multispectral Image Fusion for Enhancing Situation Awareness: A Review

The human inability to see clearly in dark/night times has been a research challenge for many decades. Night vision equipment have been extensively used in the defence sector for carrying out hassle-free operation in low visibility or dark operating conditions, but with a limitation that they are essentially monochrome (green/grey) in colour. The comprehension ability using such images is reduced and results in poor situation awareness (SA). Fusion of multispectral images has therefore been seen as a solution to the problem. Various researchers have come up with different ideologies/algorithms over the time. In this paper, the focus is to discuss about techniques developed in recent past with a vision to explore best upcoming multispectral image fusion solutions for combining visible and infrared images, which could lead to a better target detection/recognition and SA.