International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2013)

Study of Different Image fusion Algorithm

Kusum Rani1, Reecha Sharma2
1 2
M. Tech Student, Assistant Professor, UCoE, Punjabi University, Patiala, India.
Abstract-- Image fusion is a technique that integrate
complimentary details from multiple input images such that
the new image give more information and more suitable for
the purpose of human visual perception. This paper
presents a review on some of the image fusion techniques
(simple average, simple minimum, simple maximum, PCA,
DWT). Comparison of all the techniques concludes the
better approach for its future research.
Keywords-- Image Fusion, Discrete Wavelet Transform
(DWT), Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
I. INTRODUCTION
Image Fusion is a process of combining the relevant
information from a set of images of the same scene into a
single image and the resultant fused image will be more
informative and complete than any of the input images.
Input images could be multi sensor, multimodal,
multifocus or multi temporal. There are some important
requirements for the image fusion process [1]:
- The fused image should preserve all relevant
information from the input images
- The image fusion should not introduce artifacts which
can lead to a wrong diagnosis
One of the important pre-processing steps for the
fusion process is image registration.Image registration is
the process of transforming different sets of data into one
coordinate system.Image fusion find application in the
area of navigation guidance, object detection and
recognition, medical diagnosis, satellite imaging for
remote sensing, military and civilian surveillance,
etc.Image fusion algorithms can be categorized into
different levels: pixel, feature, and decision levels.Pixel
level fusion works directly on the pixels of source images
while feature level fusion algorithms operate on features
extracted from the source images.
II. IMAGE FUSION ALGORITHMS
Image fusion method can be divided into two groups
–1.Spatial domain fusion method 2.Transform domain
fusion
Spatial domain fusion method directly deal with
pixels of input images. The fusion methods such as
simple maximum, simple minimum, averaging, principal
component analysis (PCA) and IHS based methods fall
under spatial domain approaches.
In transform domain method image is first transferred
in to frequency domain. The fusion method such as DWT
fall under transform domain method .
Some of these pixel-level algorithms are described
below:
a) Simple Maximum Method: In this method, the resultant
fused image is obtained by selecting the maximum
intensity of corresponding pixels from both the input
image.
( ) ∑ ∑ ( ) ( )......(1)
A(i,j), B(i,j) are input images and F(i,j) is fused image.
b) Simple Minimum Method: In this method, the resultant
fused image is obtained by selecting the minimum
intensity of corresponding pixels from both the input
image.
( ) ∑ ∑ ( ) ( ).......(2)
A(i,j), B(i,j) are input images and F(i,j) is fused image.
c) Simple Average Method: In this method the resultant
fused image is obtained by taking the average intensity of
corresponding pixels from both the input image.
( ) ( )⁄
( ) ........(3)
A(i,j), B(i,j) are input images and F(i,j) is fused image.
d) Weighted Average Method: in this method the
resultant fused image is obtained by taking the weighted
average intensity of corresponding pixels from both the
input image.
( ) ∑ ∑ ( ) ( ) ( ).......(4)
A(i,j), B(i,j) are input images and F(i,j) is fused image
and W is weight factor.
e) Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method:
Principal Component Analysis is a sub space method,
which reduces the multidimensional data sets into lower
dimensions for analysis. This method determines the
weights for each source. image using the eigenvector
corresponding to the largest eigen value of the covariance
matrix of each source image.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2013)
Stepwise procedure for PCA method is given below: let s(n1,n2) is input image with size N1xN2 then
scaling and wavelet function are

( ) ⁄ ∑ ∑ ( ) ( )

....(5)

( ) ⁄ ∑ ∑ ( ) ( )

....(6)
General process of image fusion using DWT
Step 1. Implement Discrete Wavelet Transform on both
the input image to create wavelet lower decomposition.
Step 2. Fuse each decomposition level by using different
fusion rule .
Step 3. Carry Inverse Discrete Wavelet Transform on
fused decomposed level, which means to reconstruct the
image, while the image reconstructed is the fused image
F.

e) Discrete Wavelet Transform Method :Wavelet

transforms are multi-resolution image decomposition tool
that provide a variety of channels representing the image
feature by different frequency subbands at multi-scale. It
is a famous technique in analyzing signals. When
decomposition is performed, the approximation and
detail component can be separated 2-D Discrete Wavelet
Transformation (DWT) converts the image from the Fig 2. Wavelet Based image fusion
spatial domain to frequency domain. The image is
divided by vertical and horizontal lines and represents the
first-order of DWT, and the image can be separated with
four parts those are LL1, LH1, HL1 and HH1. [10]

Fig 3. Source Images

a)CT image b) MRI image

Fig 1. Wavelet decomposition

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2013)
Resultant fused images are shown in figure 2 [11] III. IMAGE QUALITY METRICS
The general requirement of an image fusing process is
to preserve all valid and useful information from the
source images, while at the same time it should not
introduce any distortion in resultant fused image.
Performance measures are used essential to measure the
possible benefits of fusion and also used to compare
results obtained with different algorithms.
a) Peak Signal to Noise Ratio: The PSNR is use to
c) Simple average d) Simple minimum calculate the similarity between two images. The
PSNR between the reference image R and the fused
image F is defined as

( ) .......(7)

For better fused image PSNR value should high.

b) Normalized Cross Correlation: The Normalized Cross
Content between the reference image R and the fused
image F is defined as
e) Simple maximum f) Simple weighted average
∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ .....(8)
c) Entropy (EN): Entropy is used to calculate the
amount of information. Higher value of entropy indicates
that the information increases and the fusion
performances are improved.
∑ .....(9)

g) PCA h) DWT

290
 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 5, May 2013)
TABLE 1
COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT IMAGE FUSION TECHNIQUES

S.No Fusion technique Domain Measuring Advantage Disadvantage

parameter

1 Simple Spatial PSNR-25.48 Simple in implementation Resultant fused image

Average [6] [8] EN-7.22 is not clear

2 Simple maximum Spatial PSNR-26.86 Fused image is highly Blurring effect is more
[4] [6] EN-7.20 focused image

3 PCA [7] Spatial NC-0.998 PCA is a tools which Spectral degradation

PSNR-76.44 transforms number of is present
correlated variable into
number of uncorrelated
variables, this property can
be used in image fusion

4 DWT [5][8] Transform NC-0.998 Provide better signal to Less spatial resolution
PSNR-76.44 noise ratio

5 Combine DWT, Transform NC-0.998 Output image contained Complex method

PCA[9] PSNR-76.44 both high spatial resolution .
with high quality spectral
content

[6] Anjali Malviya, S. G. Bhirud .” Image Fusion of Digital Images”

IV. CONCLUSION
Spatial domain image fusion techniques provide high
spatial resolution. But spatial domain have image
blurring problem. The Wavelet transforms provide a high
quality spectral content. Combination of DWT and PCA
provide better performance and improve the image fusion
quality.
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