Fusion for visible and infrared images using visual weight analysis and bilateral filter-based multi scale decomposition

Fusion for visible and infrared images has been an important and challenging work in image analysis. Both the feature information in infrared image and abundant detail information in visible image should be preserved and enhanced in fused result. In this paper, a detail enhanced fusion algorithm through visual weight analysis based on smooth-inspired multi scale decomposition is proposed. With variable parameter, bilateral filter-based idea successfully decomposes the two source image into several scales. At each scale level, visual weight map is calculated and used for fusion. Finally, those levels are synthetized with proper weights. Using this idea, the detail information could be enhanced easily. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed approach performs better than other methods, especially in visual effect and keeping details. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.