Multifocus image fusion scheme based on discrete cosine transform and spatial frequency

Multifocus images are different images of the same scene captured with different focus in the cameras. These images when considered individually may not give good quality. Hence to obtain a good quality image, this work proposes an algorithm for fusing multifocus images using Discrete Cosine Transform and spatial frequency. The proposed algorithm works for fusing any number of images. The second step calculates the average and maximum of all the source images and reduces the source images to be processed as two. Then Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is applied over the two input images. Min-Max normalization is done on the DCT coefficients and fusion is done using spatial frequency. Inclusion of the second step of the proposed algorithm in some existing algorithms such as Stationary Wavelet Transform, Principal Component Analysis and spatial fusion improves the performance. The metrics used for evaluation proves that the proposed algorithm gives better results than the other algorithms using DCT and state of the art techniques.