A new color image fusion method for visible and infrared images

A novel color fusion method for visible and infrared (IR) images is presented in this paper. The visible image is fused with the original infrared image and the reverse polarity of infrared (IIR) image by a grayscale fusion scheme based on curvelet transformation, respectively. These two fused results are the red and blue space of the final fused image. And the linear combination result of the visible and IR image is assigned to the green channel of the final fused result. The fusion rules are consistent with human's vision associations of warm red and cool blue. The experimental results show that the color fused image will maintain the high resolution and improve efficiently the discrimination between targets and the environment because of its colorful and natural color.