Fast Image Fusion Method Based on Lifting Wavelet Transform

Recently, multiresolution techniques especially 2d wavelet transform have been employed for image fusion. Since the traditional wavelet transform is time and memory consuming, which impedes its real-time application, a novel quick image fusion algorithm using lifting wavelet transform is proposed in this paper. First, the source images are decomposed using lifting wavelet transform respectively. Then, the decomposition coefficients are combined by appropriate fusion rules. Finally, the composite image is obtained by using inverse lifting wavelet transform. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm is more effective in both computational speed and fused image quality than traditional image fusion methods. It has great significance in practical applications , particularly in real-time system.