Visual and infrared dual-band false color image fusion method motivated by Land's experiment

A new false color image fusion method is proposed on the basis of Land's experiment on color constancy of human vision, through idealized hypothesis of the red filter and green filter, through equienergy distribution hypothesis of the light source, and by relating the infrared and visual images to the black-and-white transparencies obtained through the red and green filters of Land's experiment, respectively. The normalization of each color channel conforms with the von Kries chromatic adaptation model and the maximum red-green-blue method, which has been popularly adopted in some video systems and color theories to estimate the illumination color and which, to a certain extent, agrees with the color constancy of human vision. The method has been proven effective after it was compared with Toet et al.'s fusion method. Its colorfulness is enhanced by the strategy of assigning the difference between the source images to the blue channel, which is used in Toet et al.'s algorithm to underscore the characteristic components of the individual images. The additional opponent processing neurodynamic equation of the center-surround receptive field can improve the output contrast significantly and is believed to be more suitable for revealing details by human observers. Some perceptual evaluation results are also given at the end. (c) 2007 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.