Abstract:A novel multifocus image fusion method based on lifting stationary wavelet transform (LSWT) is proposed. The selection principles, namely fusion rules of different subband coefficients, are discussed in detail. Local feature contrast is presented according to the human vision system (HVS), which is highly sensitive to the local image contrast level. Then, the fusion rule for the low-frequency subband coefficients fusion is introduced. To choose the high frequency subband coefficients, another local feature contrast is developed according to the human vision which is often sensitive to edges and directional features, but insensitive to real luminance at independent positions. Then, a novel fusion rule is proposed for fusion of the high frequency subband coefficients. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed image fusion method is effective and can provide better performance in fusing multifocus images than the traditional contrast-based image fusion algorithms in term of informal visual inspection and objective criteria in multi-focus image fusion.