A fuzzy convolutional neural network for enhancing multi-focus image fusion

The images captured by the cameras contain distortions, misclassified pixels, uncertainties and poor contrast. Therefore, the multi-focus image fusion (MFIF) integrates various input image features to produce a single fused image using all its objects in focus. However, it is computationally complex, which leads to inconsistency. Hence, the MFIF method is employed to generate the fused image by integrating the fuzzy sets (FS) and convolutional neural network (CNN) to detect focused and unfocused parts in both source images. It is also compared with other competing six MFIF methods like Neutrosophic set based stationary wavelet transform (NSWT), guided filters, CNN, ensemble CNN, image fusion-based CNN and deep regression pair learning (DRPL). Benchmark datasets validate the superiority of the proposed FCNN method in terms of four non-reference assessment measures having mutual information (1.1678), edge information (0.7281), structural similarity (0.9850) and human perception (0.8020) and two reference metrics such as Peak signal-to-noise ratio (57.23) and root mean square error (1.814).