With the particular research on thermal and visual images

a color image fusion algorithm using the contourlet transform is presented.Firstly

through the IHS (Intensity-Hue-Saturation) transform

the color visual image is converted from RGB color space to IHS space.Next

with the contourlet transform and weighted average fusion rule

the intensity component and thermal image are merged into a grayscale image

which is then linearly stretched to have the same mean and variance as the intensity component.Finally

the stretched grayscale fused image replaces the original intensity component

and the final RGB color fused image is achieved by the inverse IHS transform with the H

S and replacement component.On the one hand

with the proposed scheme

the contourlet transform as a new mathematical tool is introduced to image fusion area.On the other hand

the algorithm provided a new color image fusion strategy of thermal and visual images.The experimental results show that

with the proposed color fusion method

the fused image produced by the contourlet transform is of better quality than that obtained through the wavelet transform.Moreover

the color fusion approach obviously improves fusion performance over the traditional IHS transform fusion method.