Abstract:Multiscale decomposition method and fusion rule are two key factors for multifocus image fusion method. The Wsystem of degree k is an orthogonal hybrid function system consisting of polynomials of degree k and piecewise polynomials of degree k. The corresponding Wtransform is an effective multiresolution analysis tool with orthogonality and reproducibility. By combining the multiscale characteristics of Wtransform and multidirection property of the nonsubsampled directional filter bank (NSDFB) transform, a new multiscale and multidirectional transform is proposed in this paper, in which multiscale decomposition is performed by the Wtransform and the multidirectional decomposition is obtained from NSDFB. On this basis, a new multifocus image fusion algorithm is proposed. According to the characteristics of the high frequency coefficients, the often used simplified PCNN is modified, and applied on the fusion rules of the high frequency coefficients. The experimental results show that the proposed fusion method can select pixels from focus areas of the source images and effectively avoid generation of artifacts. The fused image has better visual effect. The objective evaluation index including standard deviation, entropy, average gradient, and spatial frequency of the fused image demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the fusion methods based on Contourlet transform, NSCT transform and discrete wavelet.