Generation and Recombination for Multifocus Image Fusion with Free
  Number of Inputs
Huafeng Li Dan Wang Yuxin Huang Yafei Zhang Zhengtao Yu
Multifocus image fusion is an effective way to overcome the limitation of
optical lenses. Many existing methods obtain fused results by generating
decision maps. However, such methods often assume that the focused areas of the
two source images are complementary, making it impossible to achieve
simultaneous fusion of multiple images. Additionally, the existing methods
ignore the impact of hard pixels on fusion performance, limiting the visual
quality improvement of fusion image. To address these issues, a combining
generation and recombination model, termed as GRFusion, is proposed. In
GRFusion, focus property detection of each source image can be implemented
independently, enabling simultaneous fusion of multiple source images and
avoiding information loss caused by alternating fusion. This makes GRFusion
free from the number of inputs. To distinguish the hard pixels from the source
images, we achieve the determination of hard pixels by considering the
inconsistency among the detection results of focus areas in source images.
Furthermore, a multi-directional gradient embedding method for generating full
focus images is proposed. Subsequently, a hard-pixel-guided recombination
mechanism for constructing fused result is devised, effectively integrating the
complementary advantages of feature reconstruction-based method and focused
pixel recombination-based method. Extensive experimental results demonstrate
the effectiveness and the superiority of the proposed method.The source code
will be released on https://github.com/xxx/xxx.