Local color transfer based on dark channel dehazing for visible/infrared image fusion

A local color transfer method based on dark channel dehazing for visible/infrared image fusion is presented. Image fusion combines complemental information from visible and infrared images. Visible image supplies plenty of scene details and infrared image is good at popping out hot or cold targets. However, under a bad weather condition, such as haze or fog, the visible image is degraded greatly and leads to a low contrast and poor color fidelity fused image. Color transfer can improve the color appearance using a bright haze-free reference image, but it usually modifies the pixel values according to the global mean value and standard deviation in each color channel. This paper pays more attention to the dark channel of the reference image and so applies different color transfer schemes to haze area and haze-free area. Results show that it is effective for decreasing the bad effect of the haze and achieving a more visually pleasing color visible/infrared fused image.