Multi-focus image fusion based on sparse decomposition and background detection

In order to effectively improve fusion quality, a novel multi-focus image fusion approach with sparse decomposition is proposed. The source images are decomposed into principal and sparse components by robust principal component analysis (RPCA) decomposition. A sliding window technique is applied to inhibiting blocking artifacts. The focused pixels of the source images are detected by using the salient features within the sliding window and integrated to construct the final fused image. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can significantly inhibit the blocking artifacts compared to the other existing fusion methods in terms of some visual and objective evaluations.