Image fusion scheme based on modified dual pulse coupled neural network

Abstract

Image fusion combines information from multiple images of the same scene to obtain a composite image which is more suitable for further image processing tasks. This study presented an image fusion scheme based on the modified dual pulse coupled neural network (PCNN) in non‐subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) domain. NSCT can overcome the lack of shift invariance in contourlet transform. Original images were decomposed to obtain the coefficients of low‐frequency subbands and high‐frequency subbands. In this fusion scheme, a new sum‐modified Laplacian of the low‐frequency subband image, which represents the edge‐feature of the low‐frequency subband image in NSCT domain, is presented and input to motivate modified dual PCNN. For fusion of high‐frequency subband coefficients, spatial frequency will be used as the gradient features of images to motivate dual channel PCNN and to overcome Gibbs phenomena. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can significantly improve image fusion performance, performs very well in fusion and outperforms conventional methods such as traditional discrete wavelet transform, dual tree complex wavelet and PCNN in terms of objective criteria and visual appearance.