A novel algorithm of image fusion using shearlets

As a novel MGA (Multiscale Geometric Analysis) tool, shearlets are equipped with a rich mathematical structure similar to wavelets, which are associated to a multi-resolution analysis. Recently, shearlets have been used in image denoising, sparse image representation and edge detection. In this paper, as shearlet transform has the features of directionality, localization, anisotropy and multiscale, it is introduced into image fusion to obtain a fused image. The image could be decomposed by shearlet transform in any scale and any direction, and the detail information can be caught easily. Several different experiments are adopted to demonstrate that the fusion results based on shearlet transform contain more detail and smaller distortion information than any other methods does.

Research highlights
► Fuse images using Shearlets, a new Multiscale Geometric Analysis tool.
► Direction feature of shearlets is fully used in the algorithm we proposed.
► Three different experiments prove the feasibility of image fusion using Shearlets.