Infrared and visible image fusion via saliency analysis and local edge-preserving multi-scale decomposition

To retain the details of a visible image with a discernible target area, we propose a multi-scale decomposition image fusion method based on a local edge-preserving (LEP) filter and saliency detection. We first use a LEP filter to decompose the infrared and visible images. Then, a modified saliency detection method is utilized to detect the salient target areas of an infrared image, which determine the base layer's weights of fusion strategy. Finally, each layer is reconstructed to obtain a visually pleasing fused image. Comparison with 11 other state-of-the-art methods reveals the superiority of the proposed method in terms of quality and quantity results. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America