A Novel Color Image Fusion Method Based on the Multi-scale Retinex and DWT

A novel color image fusion method, based on the multi-scale Retinex (MSR) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT), is proposed. Using the MSR to enhance the color images can achieve adequate enhancement of shadowed detail and fails to rendition. The good color rendition and more details in shadows derived from the source image and the enhanced image can be combined into a fused image by DWT. The quality of the fused color image is evaluated by entropy and a human perception inspired quality metric. The results of experiment show that the fused image has the maximum value of entropy and is more accord with the human visual system.