Multi-Focus Image Fusion with Multi-Scale Transform Optimized by Metaheuristic Algorithms

Received: 25 July 2020 Accepted: 20 March 2021 Focus is limited and singular in many image capture devices. Therefore, different focused objects at different distances are obtained in a single image taken. Image fusion can be defined as the acquisition of multiple focused objects in a single image by combining important information from two or more images into a single image. In this paper, a new multi-focus image fusion method based on Bat Algorithm (BA) is presented in a Multi-Scale Transform (MST) to overcome limitations of standard MST Transform. Firstly, a specific MST (Laplacian Pyramid or Curvelet Transform) is performed on the two source images to obtain their low-pass and high-pass bands. Secondly, optimization algorithms were used to find out optimal weights for coefficients in low-pass bands to improve the accuracy of the fusion image and finally the fused multi-focus image is reconstructed by the inverse MST. The experimental results are compared with different methods using reference and nonreference evaluation metrics to evaluate the performance of image fusion methods.