A novel multifocus image fusion scheme based on pixel significance using wavelet transform

In this paper, we propose a novel fusion rule for combining multifocus images of a scene by taking their weighted average in wavelet domain. The weights are decided adaptively by computing significance of the pixel using information available at finer resolution bands such that the proposed significance depends on the strength of edges giving more weightage to pixel with sharper neighborhood. The performance have been extensively tested on several pairs of multifocus images and compared quantitatively with various existing methods. The analysis shows that the proposed method increases the quality of the fused image significantly, both visually and in terms quantitative parameters, by achieving major reduction in artefacts.