Abstract—To overcome the difficulties of sub-band coefficients

selection in multiscale transform domain-based image fusion

and solve the problem of block effects suffered by spatial

domain-based image fusion, this paper presents a novel hybrid

multifocus image fusion method. First, the source multifocus

images are decomposed using the nonsubsampled contourlet

transform (NSCT). The low-frequency sub-band coefficients are

fused by the sum-modified-Laplacian-based local visual contrast,

whereas the high-frequency sub-band coefficients are fused by

the local Log-Gabor energy. The initial fused image is subsequently

reconstructed based on the inverse NSCT with the fused

coefficients. Second, after analyzing the similarity between the

previous fused image and the source images, the initial focus

area detection map is obtained, which is used for achieving the

decision map obtained by employing a mathematical morphology

postprocessing technique. Finally, based on the decision