In this paper, a multi-focus image fusion algorithm via the distance-weighted regional energy and structure tensor in non-subsampled contourlet transform domain is introduced. The distance-weighted regional energy-based fusion rule was used to deal with low-frequency components, and the structure tensor-based fusion rule was used to process high-frequency components; fused sub-bands were integrated with the inverse non-subsampled contourlet transform, and a fused multi-focus image was generated. We conducted a series of simulations and experiments on the multi-focus image public dataset Lytro; the experimental results of 20 sets of data show that our algorithm has significant advantages compared to advanced algorithms and that it can produce clearer and more informative multi-focus fusion images.
Keywords: distance-weighted regional energy; image fusion; multi-focus image; non-subsampled contourlet transform; structure tensor.