Multi-Focus Image Fusion Using Geometric Algebra Based Discrete Fourier Transform

For color image fusion, existing traditional algorithms regard each color image pixel as a scalar which may lose the relationships among spectral channels. In this paper, a novel multi-focus image fusion algorithm using geometric algebra based Discrete Fourier Transform (GA-DFT) is proposed. First, a novel Discrete Fourier Transform based on geometric algebra (GA) is provided. Second, the proposed algorithm represents the color image as a GA multivector by mapping the RGB channels into the GA space. Third, the variance is selected as a contrast measure to fuse the source images in GA space. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve the comparable performance with its counterparts in terms of subjective quality evaluation, and outperform most of the traditional algorithms in terms of objective quality metrics, indicating good performance in image fusion applications.