Discrete Cosine Transform based fusion of multi-focus images for visual sensor networks

• Method presents a simple and efficient multi-focus image fusion scheme in DCT domain.
• It is explicitly designed for resource constrained wireless visual sensor systems.
• The fusion rule does not involve any complex arithmetic floating point operations like mean or variance calculations.
• Simulations are performed using Atmel Atmega128 processor of Mica 2 mote.
• Extensive experiments verify the efficiency improvement in terms of image quality and computation energy.

This paper presents a simple and efficient multi-focus image fusion scheme explicitly designed for wireless visual sensor systems equipped with resource constrained, battery powered image sensors employed in surveillance, hazardous environment like battlefields etc. Here the fusion of multi-focus images is based on higher valued Alternating Current (AC) coefficients calculated in Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain. The proposed method overcomes the computation and energy limitation of low power devices and is investigated in terms of image quality and computation energy. Simulations are performed using Atmel Atmega128 processor of Mica 2 mote to measure the resultant energy savings. The experimental results verify the significant efficiency improvement of the proposed method in output quality and energy consumption, when compared with other fusion techniques in DCT domain.