MSIMCNN: Multi-scale inception module convolutional neural network for multi-focus image fusion

The aim of image fusion is to obtain a clear image by combining useful information coming from multiple images. However, the fused image usually has the problem of artifacts and unclear boundary. To address these problems, a deep convolutional neural network based framework for multi-focus image fusion is proposed in this paper, called multi-scale inception module convolutional neural network (MSIMCNN). MSIMCNN converts the entire image into a binary mask to estimate the focus characteristics, and obtains the clear boundary between focus and defocus. First of all, a pair of focus images and the corresponding feature images detected by the Laplace operator are inputted into the network. The Laplace operator can detect the edge and gradient of focus in the image, which can help us accurately reconstruct the focused area in the focus map and distinguish the focus and defocus boundaries. Then, in the feature extraction stage, different scales of convolution kernels are designed to extract the rich and complementary features at different scales of the source images. At the same time, the inception module is added to increase the width of the network and reduce the parameters, which can extract more focus features required for image reconstruction and reduce the complexity. Finally, the focus map of the source image pair can be obtained in the feature reconstruction stage. In this stage, an efficient method is proposed to make the focus mask, which is used for the calculation of the loss function and the generation of the training set. The experimental results on different data sets confirm the superiority and effectiveness of MSIMCNN compared with other methods.