Merging infrared and color visible images with a contrast enhanced fusion method

Guangxin Li; Ke Wang

doi:10.1117/12.720792

9 April 2007 Merging infrared and color visible images with an contrast enhanced fusion method

Guangxin Li, Ke Wang

Proceedings Volume 6571, Multisensor, Multisource Information Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications 2007; 657108 (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.720792
Event: Defense and Security Symposium, 2007, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

We propose a contrast enhanced fusion (CEF) method for merging infrared and color visible images. The CEF method can be carried out in two ways: the standard CEF method and the fast CEF method. The standard method transforms the original RGB color visible image into a linear luminance-chrominance color space in order to treat the achromatic and chromatic components separately. The achromatic component and infrared image are combined by a grayscale fusion scheme, and the original achromatic component is replaced by the grayscale fused image. Before the data are retransformed back into the RGB color space, the means and variances between the original achromatic component and the grayscale fused image are matched by a linear luminance remapping. The remapping procedure can fairly enhance the contrast of the final color fused image. The standard CEF method can be implemented efficiently by the fast CEF method that has the same fusion performance as the standard approach but manipulates images directly in RGB color space. We used the proposed method to merge long wave infrared and color TV images. The experimental results show that the CEF method can effectively produce a high-contrast color fused image with similar natural color characteristics as the original color visible image. In addition, we have also illustrated that the hybrid simple and complex CEF methods can be applied as a region of interest (ROI) image fusion solution, which allows ROIs to be fused with better quality than the rest of the original images.

Citation Download Citation

Guangxin Li and Ke Wang "Merging infrared and color visible images with an contrast enhanced fusion method", Proc. SPIE 6571, Multisensor, Multisource Information Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications 2007, 657108 (9 April 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.720792

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