A scheme for edge-based multi-focus Color image fusion

In this paper, a novel region-based multi-focus color image fusion method is proposed, which employs the focused edges extracted from the source images to obtain a fused image with better focus. At first, the edges are obtained from the source images, using two suitable edge operators (Zero-cross and Canny). Then, a block-wise region comparison is performed to extract out the focused edges which have been morphologically dilated, followed by the selection of the largest component to remove isolated points. Any discontinuity in the detected edges is removed by consulting with the edge detection output from the Canny edge operator. The best reconstructed edge image is chosen, which is later converted into a focused region. Finally, the fused image is constructed by selecting pixels from the source images with the help of a prescribed color decision map. The proposed method has been implemented and tested on a set of real 2-D multi-focus image pairs (both gray-scale and color). The algorithm has a competitive performance with respect to the recent fusion methods in terms of subjective and objective evaluation.