Synthetic aperture radar and color visible images fusion algorithm based on region division strategy

Multisensor image fusion can be used as an advanced technique for image enhancement. A fusion method based on region division strategy is proposed for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and color visible images. The SAR target feature detection function is first constructed to divide the images into the SAR target region and non-SAR target region. Meanwhile, SAR image despeckling is considered during the generation of this detection function. Then, two different fusion rules are designed for these two regions. More specifically, the fusion rule adopted in the SAR target region is fusing the high-frequency feature within the SAR image, and the fusion rule employed in the non-SAR target region is maintaining the spectral and detail information of the color visible image. Experimental results on several pairs of SAR and color visible images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared with the conventional image fusion methods, the proposed method provides better results for all evaluation criteria, including spectral distortions, feature similarity, mutual information, and peak signal-to-noise ratio.