Merging Thermal And Visual Images By A Contrast Pyramid

Integration of images from different sensing modalities can produce information that cannot be obtained by viewing the sensor outputs separately and consecutively. This paper introduces a hierarchical image merging scheme based on a multiresolution contrast decomposition (the ratio of a low-pass pyramid). The composite images produced by this scheme preserve those details from the input images that are most relevant to visual perception. The method is tested by merging parallel registered thermal and visual images. The results show that the fused images present a more detailed representation of the depicted scene. Detection, recognition, and search tasks may therefore benefit from this new image representation.