Fusion of Multi-focus Image by Blocks Optimal Positions

Digital imaging systems suffer from limited depth of field due to the nature of the optics involved. As a consequence, an object will appear in focus when it is on the focus plane and will appear blurred as it deviates from the focus plane. Therefore, in a single image only part of the plane within the depth of field can be sharp, while the rest areas are blurred. To overcome this problem, a series of multi-focus images are taken by gradually moving the focal plane. Then, all the in-focus regions are merged together through a process called multi-focus image fusion to generate an all-in-focus image of the scene. In this paper, a novel multi-focus image fusion method based on placing the blocks in the optimal positions considering sharp regions of source images. The experimental results show that the proposed method can fuse the multi-focus source images and extend the depth of field efficiently.