A simple and efficient image fusion algorithm based on standard deviation in wavelet domain

Fusion is a process of extraction of useful information acquired from several domains. The objective of image fusion is to extract the needed data from multiple images to generate a composite image that contains an enhanced representation of the image than any individual source image. Image fusion can be applied to various images like multi-sensor, multi-modal, multi-temporal or multi-focus. The reason behind going for image fusion is to reduce bandwidth, time consumption, increase in spatial information and reduction in power consumption. In this paper, a simple and competent image fusion algorithm based on standard deviation in wavelet domain is proposed and compared with both transform domain as well as spatial domain techniques. The techniques are evaluated with various databases quantitatively and qualitatively.