Multi-focus image fusion using a bilateral gradient-based sharpness criterion

The aim of multi-focus image fusion is to combine multiple images with different focuses for enhancing the perception of a scene. The challenge is to how evaluate the local content (sharp) information of the input images. To tackle the above challenge, a new bilateral sharpness criterion is proposed to exploit both the strength and the phase coherence that are evaluated using the gradient information of the images. Then the proposed bilateral sharpness criterion is further exploited to perform weighted aggregation of multi-focus images. Extensive experimental results are provided to demonstrate that the proposed bilateral sharpness criterion outperforms conventional seven sharpness criterions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.