The end-to-end image fusion framework has achieved promising performance, with dedicated convolutional networks aggregating the multi-modal local appearance. However, long-range dependencies are directly neglected in existing CNN fusion approaches, impeding balancing the entire image-level perception for complex scenario fusion. In this paper, therefore, we propose an infrared and visible image fusion algorithm based on a lightweight transformer module and adversarial learning. Inspired by the global interaction power, we use the transformer technique to learn the effective global fusion relations. In particular, shallow features extracted by CNN are interacted in the proposed transformer fusion module to refine the fusion relationship within the spatial scope and across channels simultaneously. Besides, adversarial learning is designed in the training process to improve the output discrimination via imposing competitive consistency from the inputs, reflecting the specific characteristics in infrared and visible images. The experimental performance demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed modules, with superior improvement against the state-of-the-art, generalising a novel paradigm via transformer and adversarial learning in the fusion task.
Recent learning-based image fusion methods have marked numerous progress in pre-registered multi-modality data, but suffered serious ghosts dealing with misaligned multi-modality data, due to the spatial deformation and the difficulty narrowing cross-modality discrepancy. To overcome the obstacles, in this paper, we present a robust cross-modality generation-registration paradigm for unsupervised misaligned infrared and visible image fusion (IVIF). Specifically, we propose a Cross-modality Perceptual Style Transfer Network (CPSTN) to generate a pseudo infrared image taking a visible image as i…
Designing face recognition systems that are capable of matching face images obtained in the thermal spectrum with those obtained in the visible spectrum is a challenging problem. In this work, we propose the use of semantic-guided generative adversarial network (SG-GAN) to automatically synthesize visible face images from their thermal counterparts. Specifically, semantic labels, extracted by a face parsing network, are used to compute a semantic loss function to regularize the adversarial network during training. These semantic cues denote high-level facial component information associated wi…
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey（罗格斯大学，新泽西州立大学）；U.S. Army Research Laboratory（美国陆军研究实验室）
The large domain discrepancy between faces captured in polarimetric (or conventional) thermal and visible domain makes cross-domain face recognition quite a challenging problem for both human-examiners and computer vision algorithms. Previous approaches utilize a two-step procedure (visible feature estimation and visible image reconstruction) to synthesize the visible image given the corresponding polarimetric thermal image. However, these are regarded as two disjoint steps and hence may hinder the performance of visible face reconstruction. We argue that joint optimization would be a better w…
Dif-Fusion: Towards High Color Fidelity in Infrared and Visible Image Fusion with Diffusion Models
Central South University（中南大学）；Changsha University of Science and Technology（长沙理工大学）；Hunan University（湖南大学）；Peng Cheng Laboratory（鹏城实验室）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Wuhan University（武汉大学）
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey（罗格斯大学新泽西州立大学）；U.S. Army Research Laboratory（美国陆军研究实验室）；Booz Allen Hamilton（博思艾伦汉密尔顿公司）；Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学）
The large domain discrepancy between faces captured in polarimetric (or conventional) thermal and visible domain makes cross-domain face verification a highly challenging problem for human examiners as well as computer vision algorithms. Previous approaches utilize either a two-step procedure (visible feature estimation and visible image reconstruction) or an input-level fusion technique, where different Stokes images are concatenated and used as a multi-channel input to synthesize the visible image given the corresponding polarimetric signatures. Although these methods have yielded improvemen…
DRFusion: Drift-Resilient Temporally Consistent Infrared-Visible Video Fusion
College of Computer Science；Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China；School of Software Technology \& DUT-RU International School of ISE, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China；College of Information Science；Technology, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China
Central University of Finance and Economics（中央财经大学）
The GAN-based infrared and visible image fusion methods have gained ever-increasing attention due to its effectiveness and superiority. However, the existing methods adopt the global pixel distribution of source images as the basis for discrimination, which fails to focus on the key modality information. Moreover, the dual-discriminator based methods suffer from the confrontation between the discriminators. To this end, we propose an attention-guided and wavelet-constrained GAN for infrared and visible image fusion (AWFGAN). In this method, two unique discrimination strategies are designed to …
GAN-HA: A generative adversarial network with a novel heterogeneous dual-discriminator network and a new attention-based fusion strategy for infrared and visible image fusion
College of New Materials and New Energies, Shenzhen Technology University（深圳技术大学新材料与新能源学院）
This work tackles the face recognition task on images captured using thermal camera sensors which can operate in the non-light environment. While it can greatly increase the scope and benefits of the current security surveillance systems, performing such a task using thermal images is a challenging problem compared to face recognition task in the Visible Light Domain (VLD). This is partly due to the much smaller amount number of thermal imagery data collected compared to the VLD data. Unfortunately, direct application of the existing very strong face recognition models trained using VLD data i…
Diminished reality is a technology that aims to remove objects from video images and fills in the missing region with plausible pixels. Most conventional methods utilize the different cameras that capture the same scene from different viewpoints to allow regions to be removed and restored. In this paper, we propose an RGB-D image inpainting method using generative adversarial network, which does not require multiple cameras. Recently, an RGB image inpainting method has achieved outstanding results by employing a generative adversarial network. However, RGB inpainting methods aim to restore onl…
Università di Corsica（科西嘉大学）；Tecnológico de Monterrey（蒙特雷理工学院）
Early wildfire detection is of paramount importance to avoid as much damage as possible to the environment, properties, and lives. Deep Learning (DL) models that can leverage both visible and infrared information have the potential to display state-of-the-art performance, with lower false-positive rates than existing techniques. However, most DL-based image fusion methods have not been evaluated in the domain of fire imagery. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, no publicly available dataset contains visible-infrared fused fire images. There is a growing interest in DL-based image fusio…
Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；Shanghai University of Finance and Economics（上海财经大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；The University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；Zhejiang University（浙江大学）
Visible watermark plays an important role in image copyright protection and the robustness of a visible watermark to an attack is shown to be essential. To evaluate and improve the effectiveness of watermark, watermark removal attracts increasing attention and becomes a hot research top. Current methods cast the watermark removal as an image-to-image translation problem where the encode-decode architectures with pixel-wise loss are adopted to transfer the transparent watermarked pixels into unmarked pixels. However, when a number of realistic images are presented, the watermarks are more likel…
SGDFuse: SAM-Guided Diffusion Model for High-Fidelity Infrared and Visible Image Fusion
School of Computer Science（计算机科学学院）；Business University, Yantai, China（烟台商学院）；College of Computer and Data Science（计算机与数据科学学院）；Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, China（福州大学）；School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences（计算与数学科学学院）；University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom（莱斯特大学）；School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence（计算与人工智能学院）；Director of the Rapid-Rich Object Search Laboratory（快速丰富对象搜索实验室主任）；NTU-PKU Joint Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore（NTU-PKU联合研究机构，新加坡国立大学）
Institute of Imaging and Computer Vision, RWTH Aachen University（亚琛工业大学成像与计算机视觉研究所）
Recent developments in fluorescence microscopy allow capturing high-resolution 3D images over time for living model organisms. To be able to image even large specimens, techniques like multi-view light-sheet imaging record different orientations at each time point that can then be fused into a single high-quality volume. Based on measured point spread functions (PSF), deconvolution and content fusion are able to largely revert the inevitable degradation occurring during the imaging process. Classical multi-view deconvolution and fusion methods mainly use iterative procedures and content-based …
Indian Institute of Information Technology, Sri City（印度信息技术学院斯里城校区）
In many real world scenarios, it is difficult to capture the images in the visible light spectrum (VIS) due to bad lighting conditions. However, the images can be captured in such scenarios using Near-Infrared (NIR) and Thermal (THM) cameras. The NIR and THM images contain the limited details. Thus, there is a need to transform the images from THM/NIR to VIS for better understanding. However, it is non-trivial task due to the large domain discrepancies and lack of abundant datasets. Nowadays, Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is able to transform the images from one domain to another domain…
Infrared and visible image fusion is an important problem in the field of image fusion which has been applied widely in many fields. To better preserve the useful information from source images, in this paper, we propose a novel image fusion method based on latent low-rank representation(LatLRR) which is simple and effective. Firstly, the source images are decomposed into low-rank parts(global structure) and salient parts(local structure) by LatLRR. Then, the low-rank parts are fused by weighted-average strategy to preserve more contour information. Then, the salient parts are simply fused by …
In this paper, we present a novel deep learning architecture for infrared and visible images fusion problem. In contrast to conventional convolutional networks, our encoding network is combined by convolutional layers, fusion layer and dense block in which the output of each layer is connected to every other layer. We attempt to use this architecture to get more useful features from source images in encoding process. And two fusion layers(fusion strategies) are designed to fuse these features. Finally, the fused image is reconstructed by decoder. Compared with existing fusion methods, the prop…
Infrared and visible image fusion has been a hot issue in image fusion. In this task, a fused image containing both the gradient and detailed texture information of visible images as well as the thermal radiation and highlighting targets of infrared images is expected to be obtained. In this paper, a novel Bayesian fusion model is established for infrared and visible images. In our model, the image fusion task is cast into a regression problem. To measure the variable uncertainty, we formulate the model in a hierarchical Bayesian manner. Aiming at making the fused image satisfy human visual sy…
Liaoning Normal University（辽宁师范大学）；Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学）
General deep learning-based methods for infrared and visible image fusion rely on the unsupervised mechanism for vital information retention by utilizing elaborately designed loss functions. However, the unsupervised mechanism depends on a well designed loss function, which cannot guarantee that all vital information of source images is sufficiently extracted. In this work, we propose a novel interactive feature embedding in self-supervised learning framework for infrared and visible image fusion, attempting to overcome the issue of vital information degradation. With the help of self-supervis…
Multi-sensor fusion is widely used in the environment perception system of the autonomous vehicle. It solves the interference caused by environmental changes and makes the whole driving system safer and more reliable. In this paper, a novel visible and near-infrared fusion method based on texture information is proposed to enhance unstructured environmental images. It aims at the problems of artifact, information loss and noise in traditional visible and near infrared image fusion methods. Firstly, the structure information of the visible image (RGB) and the near infrared image (NIR) after tex…
We experimentally study the robustness of deep camera-LiDAR fusion architectures for 2D object detection in autonomous driving. First, we find that the fusion model is usually both more accurate, and more robust against single-source attacks than single-sensor deep neural networks. Furthermore, we show that without adversarial training, early fusion is more robust than late fusion, whereas the two perform similarly after adversarial training. However, we note that single-channel adversarial training of deep fusion is often detrimental even to robustness. Moreover, we observe cross-channel exte…
Suzhou University of Science and Technology（苏州科技大学）；Jiangnan University（江南大学）
Background: Leaning redundant and complementary relationships is a critical step in the human visual system. Inspired by the infrared cognition ability of crotalinae animals, we design a joint convolution auto-encoder (JCAE) network for infrared and visible image fusion. Methods: Our key insight is to feed infrared and visible pair images into the network simultaneously and separate an encoder stream into two private branches and one common branch, the private branch works for complementary features learning and the common branch does for redundant features learning. We also build two fusion r…
SFDFusion: An Efficient Spatial-Frequency Domain Fusion Network for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion
Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学人工智能学院）；School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学计算机科学与工程学院）
Deep learning is a rapidly developing approach in the field of infrared and visible image fusion. In this context, the use of dense blocks in deep networks significantly improves the utilization of shallow information, and the combination of the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) also improves the fusion performance of two source images. We propose a new method based on dense blocks and GANs , and we directly insert the input image-visible light image in each layer of the entire network. We use SSIM and gradient loss functions that are more consistent with perception instead of mean square e…
FusionRegister: Every Infrared and Visible Image Fusion Deserves Registration
School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China（江南大学人工智能与计算机科学学院）；School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, China（苏州科技大学电子与信息工程学院）
The success of multimodal data fusion in deep learning appears to be attributed to the use of complementary in-formation between multiple input data. Compared to their predictive performance, relatively less attention has been devoted to the robustness of multimodal fusion models. In this paper, we investigated whether the current multimodal fusion model utilizes the complementary intelligence to defend against adversarial attacks. We applied gradient based white-box attacks such as FGSM and PGD on MFNet, which is a major multispectral (RGB, Thermal) fusion deep learning model for semantic seg…
Jiangnan University（江南大学）；Suzhou University of Science and Technology（苏州科技大学）
The traditional two-state hidden Markov model divides the high frequency coefficients only into two states (large and small states). Such scheme is prone to produce an inaccurate statistical model for the high frequency subband and reduces the quality of fusion result. In this paper, a fine-grained multi-state contextual hidden Markov model (MCHMM) is proposed for infrared and visible image fusion in the non-subsampled Shearlet domain, which takes full consideration of the strong correlations and level of details of NSST coefficients. To this end, an accurate soft context variable is designed …
Taiyuan University of Science and Technology（太原科技大学）；Jiangnan University（江南大学）；Nanyang Normal University（南阳师范学院）
The existing deep learning fusion methods mainly concentrate on the convolutional neural networks, and few attempts are made with transformer. Meanwhile, the convolutional operation is a content-independent interaction between the image and convolution kernel, which may lose some important contexts and further limit fusion performance. Towards this end, we present a simple and strong fusion baseline for infrared and visible images, namely\textit{ Residual Swin Transformer Fusion Network}, termed as SwinFuse. Our SwinFuse includes three parts: the global feature extraction, fusion layer and fea…
Jiangnan University（江南大学）；University of Surrey（萨里大学）
In the image fusion field, the design of deep learning-based fusion methods is far from routine. It is invariably fusion-task specific and requires a careful consideration. The most difficult part of the design is to choose an appropriate strategy to generate the fused image for a specific task in hand. Thus, devising learnable fusion strategy is a very challenging problem in the community of image fusion. To address this problem, a novel end-to-end fusion network architecture (RFN-Nest) is developed for infrared and visible image fusion. We propose a residual fusion network (RFN) which is bas…
CoMoFusion: Fast and High-quality Fusion of Infrared and Visible Image with Consistency Model
School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Jiangnan University（江南大学人工智能与计算机科学学院）；School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology（苏州科技大学电子与信息工程学院）；College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University（浙江大学信息科学与电子工程学院）
针对生成式红外与可见光图像融合训练不稳、推理慢的问题，提出 CoMoFusion，利用一致性模型在潜空间建模多模态特征并结合像素值选择损失，实现快速高质量融合，达到 SOTA 性能。
Jiangnan University（江南大学）；University of Strathclyde（斯特拉斯克莱德大学）
In this paper we propose a novel method for infrared and visible image fusion where we develop nest connection-based network and spatial/channel attention models. The nest connection-based network can preserve significant amounts of information from input data in a multi-scale perspective. The approach comprises three key elements: encoder, fusion strategy and decoder respectively. In our proposed fusion strategy, spatial attention models and channel attention models are developed that describe the importance of each spatial position and of each channel with deep features. Firstly, the source …
School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Jiangnan University（江南大学人工智能与计算机科学学院）
Existing infrared and visible image fusion methods often face the dilemma of balancing modal information. Generative fusion methods reconstruct fused images by learning from data distributions, but their generative capabilities remain limited. Moreover, the lack of interpretability in modal information selection further affects the reliability and consistency of fusion results in complex scenarios. This manuscript revisits the essence of generative image fusion under the inspiration of human cognitive laws and proposes a novel infrared and visible image fusion method, termed HCLFuse. First, HC…
Infrared and visible image fusion (IVIF) expects to obtain images that retain thermal radiation information from infrared images and texture details from visible images. In this paper, a model-based convolutional neural network (CNN) model, referred to as Algorithm Unrolling Image Fusion (AUIF), is proposed to overcome the shortcomings of traditional CNN-based IVIF models. The proposed AUIF model starts with the iterative formulas of two traditional optimization models, which are established to accomplish two-scale decomposition, i.e., separating low-frequency base information and high-frequen…
Sichuan University（四川大学）；University of British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚大学）；Xidian University（西安电子科技大学）；Incheon National University（仁川大学）；Shandong University of Technology（山东理工大学）
In computer vision and image processing tasks, image fusion has evolved into an attractive research field. However, recent existing image fusion methods are mostly built on pixel-level operations, which may produce unacceptable artifacts and are time-consuming. In this paper, a symmetric encoder-decoder with a residual block (SEDR) for infrared and visible image fusion is proposed. For the training stage, the SEDR network is trained with a new dataset to obtain a fixed feature extractor. For the fusion stage, first, the trained model is utilized to extract the intermediate features and compens…
The use of deep learning for human identification and object detection is becoming ever more prevalent in the surveillance industry. These systems have been trained to identify human body's or faces with a high degree of accuracy. However, there have been successful attempts to fool these systems with different techniques called adversarial attacks. This paper presents a final report for an adversarial attack using visible light on facial recognition systems. The relevance of this research is to exploit the physical downfalls of deep neural networks. This demonstration of weakness within these…
Jiangnan University（江南大学）；University of Surrey（萨里大学）
Image decomposition is crucial for many image processing tasks, as it allows to extract salient features from source images. A good image decomposition method could lead to a better performance, especially in image fusion tasks. We propose a multi-level image decomposition method based on latent low-rank representation(LatLRR), which is called MDLatLRR. This decomposition method is applicable to many image processing fields. In this paper, we focus on the image fusion task. We develop a novel image fusion framework based on MDLatLRR, which is used to decompose source images into detail parts(s…
MSGFusion: Multimodal Scene Graph-Guided Infrared and Visible Image Fusion
College of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China（中国海洋大学计算机科学与技术学院）；College of Electronic Engineering, Ocean University of China（中国海洋大学电子工程学院）
EPOFusion: Exposure aware Progressive Optimization Method for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion
College of Information Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology（浙江工业大学信息工程学院）；College of Information Science and Technology, Zhejiang Shuren University（浙江树人大学信息科技学院）；Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学电机电子工程系）
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）
Infrared and visible images, as multi-modal image pairs, show significant differences in the expression of the same scene. The image fusion task is faced with two problems: one is to maintain the unique features between different modalities, and the other is to maintain features at various levels like local and global features. This paper discusses the limitations of deep learning models in image fusion and the corresponding optimization strategies. Based on artificially designed structures and constraints, we divide models into explicit models, and implicit models that adaptively learn high-l…
