Pixel-level image fusion using wavelets and principal component analysis

Image registration and fusion are of great importance in defence and civilian sectors, e.g., recognising a ground/air force vehicle and medical imaging. Pixel-level image fusion using wavelets and principal component analysis has been implemented and demonstrated in PC MATLAB. Different performance metrics with and without reference image are implemented to evaluate the performance of image fusion algorithms. As expected, the simple averaging fusion algorithm shows degraded performance. The ringing tone presented in the fused image can be avoided using wavelets with shift invariant property. It has been concluded that image fusion using wavelets with higher level of decomposition showed better performance in some metrics and in other metrics, principal components analysis showed better performance. © 2008, DESIDOC.