OPTIMAL LEVEL OF DECOMPOSITION OF STATIONARY WAVELET TRANSFORM FOR REGION LEVEL FUSION OF MULTI-FOCUSED IMAGES

In machine vision, due to the limited depth-of-focus of optical lenses in CCD devices, it is not possible to have a single image that contains all the information of objects in the image. To achieve this, image fusion is required which is usually refers to the process of combining two or more different images, each containing different features into a new single image retaining important features from each and every image with extended information content. The approaches to image fusion can be classified into two namely Spatial Fusion and Transform fusion. The most commonly used transform for image fusion at multi scale is Discrete Wavelet Transform since it minimizes structural distortions. But, wavelet transform suffers from lack of shift invariance and this disadvantage is overcome by Stationary Wavelet Transform. This paper describes the optimum level of decomposition of Stationary Wavelet Transform for region based fusion of multi focused images in terms of various performance measures.