Investigation of multi-focus image fusion

In this study, a study has been carried out on the multi-focus image fusion that is the sub-branch of the image processing area. The aim of this thesis is to propose a new and effective multi-focus image fusion method that takes advantage of the successful aspects of present methods and improves the missing aspects. The goal of multi-focus image fusion is to provide a completely focused image by distinguishing between focused and unfocused pixels. Based on the literature review, it has been noticed that the importance of edge information in distinguishing pixels is emphasized. It has been concluded that the difference between focused/ non-focused pixels can be revealed more clearly with gradient images rather than the original images. The energy of Gradient (EOG) and standard deviation functions have been used as the focus measurement on gradient images. In order to minimize the error, the majority voting method is applied with different window sizes for the final fusion. The proposed method has been compared with seventeen different new and traditional multi-focus image fusion techniques both visually and objectively. Six different quantitative metrics have been used for objective evaluation. It has been observed that the proposed method is promising according to visual evaluation and 83.3% success has been achieved by being first in five out of six metrics according to objective evaluation.