A 2D Wigner Distribution-based multisize windows technique for image fusion

We present a scheme for image fusion based on a 2D implementation of the Wigner Distribution (WD) combined with a multisize windows technique. The joint space–frequency distribution provided by the WD can be managed as a measure of saliency that indicates which regions among different sources (channels) should be preserved. However such a saliency measure varies significantly according to the local analysis (window) in which the WD is calculated. Hence, large windows provide high resolution and robustness against possible noise present in channels and small windows provide accurate localization. The multisize windows technique combines the saliency measures of different windows taking advantage of the benefit contributed by each size. The performance assessment was conducted in artificial multifocus images under different noise exposures as well as real multifocus scenarios. 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.