A new method of medical image fusion based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform

To improve the normal medical image fusion algorithm in order to avoid the loss of the detailed information in the processes of medical image fusion, a multiscale medical image fusion method based on nonsubsampled contourlet transform(NSCT) is proposed in this paper. First, the source images(MRI and CT images) are decomposed by using nonsubsampled contourlet transform. Then, the details of contourlet coefficients are fused on each corresponding levels with a vision feature fusion operator. Finally, the fused image will be obtained by taking the inverse nonsubsampled contourlet transformation. The experimental results show that the effect of the nonsubsampled contourlet-based method is obviously improved, and the proposed method can effectively preserve the detailed information of the source images. © 2009 SPIE.