Multi-Focus Image Fusion of Digital Images

Image fusion is the process by which two or more images are combined into a single image, retaining the important features from each of the original images. The goal of Image Fusion (IF) is to integrate complementary multi-sensor, multi-temporal and/or multi-view information into one new image, the quality of which cannot be achieved otherwise. The term "quality", its meaning and measurement depend on the particular application. An image contains different types of information. The objective in image fusion is to increase information that is relevant to a particular application. This paper presents fusion of multi-focus images based on a maximum selection scheme, weighted average scheme and window based verification scheme. Further, image fusion techniques, based on application of wavelet transform in pixel-based as well as region based fusion algorithms have been implemented. The results obtained are compared through various quantitative image-quality metrics.