Fusion of color and infrared images using gradient transfer and total variation minimization

The objective of this paper is to propose an algorithm for fusion of images of two different image modalities, i.e., color visual image and its corresponding infrared (IR) image. Fusion method is based on l
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total variation minimization technique, and it combines appearance detail and thermal information for a scene using visual and IR images, respectively. Moreover, the proposed method maintains the natural color of the visual image in the fused image. Normally, IR image highlights the camouflage or hidden target in a scene due to its thermal variations from other objects. Therefore, the fused image is more detailed single image than its constituent images, and it reveals the concealed information which is not visible in input images. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the algorithm.