Multi-focus image fusion based on sparse feature matrix decomposition and morphological filtering

Multi-focus image fusion aims to fuse multiple images with different focus points into one single image where all pixels appear in-focus. A novel multi-focus image fusion method is presented based on a sparse feature matrix decomposition and morphological filtering. First, the sparse feature matrices of original multi-focus images are extracted by decomposing the multi-focus images. Second, a temporary matrix is obtained by weighting the sparse matrices containing salient features of original images. Third, the bright and dark regions are extracted by morphologically filtering the temporary matrix. Finally, the final fusion result is formed by importing the extracted features into the base image which is established by weighting the source images. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method not only works well in various multi-focus image fusions, but also outperforms some existing methods in both subjective and objective qualities. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.