Multi-focus image fusionwith sparse feature based pulse coupled neural network

In order to better extract the focused regions and effectively improve the quality of the fused image, a novel multi-focus image fusion scheme withsparse feature basedpulse coupled neural network (PCNN) is proposed. The registered source images are decomposed into principal matrices and sparse matrices by robust principal component analysis (RPCA).The salient features of the sparse matrices construct the sparse feature space of the source images. The sparse features are used to motivate the PCNN neurons. The focused regions of the source images are detected by the output of the PCNN and integrated to construct the final fused image. Experimental results showthat the proposed scheme works better in extracting the focused regions and improving the fusion quality compared to the other existing fusion methods in both spatial and transform domain.