Title: Regional firing characteristic of PCNN-based multimodal medical image fusion in NSCT domain

Authors: S. Sivasangumani; P.S. Gomathi; B. Kalaavathi

Addresses: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, M.A.R. College of Engineering and Technology, Affiliated to Anna University, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, V.S.B. Engineering College, Affiliated to Anna University, Karur, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Computer Science and Engineering, K.S.R. Institute for Engineering and Technology, Affiliated to Anna University, Tiruchengode, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Image fusion is the process of combining images from different sources to obtain better situational awareness. The objective is to combine the most relevant information from source images into composite image. In this paper, a regional firing intensity (RFI) is defined, which is based on statistical characteristic in local window of neuron firing times when pulse coupled neural networks (PCNN) is utilised in the image fusion. A novel image fusion algorithm based on regional firing characteristic PCNN (RFC-PCNN) is proposed and RFI is considered as a determination to select the coefficients from NSCT-based MSR of source images. The proposed algorithm is suitable for increasing the fusion quality of brain tumour medical image fusion, and also it removes the artefact effect in fused image. The experimental results show that the proposed method is better than other fusion methods and increases the quality of the fused image.

Keywords: medical image fusion; DWT; discrete wavelet transform; multiscale decomposition; MSD; non-subsampled contourlet transform; NSCT; RFC-PCNN; PSNR; peak SNR; signal to noise ratio; regional firing characteristic; PCNNs; pulse coupled neural networks; medical images; brain tumours; brain tumour imaging.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2015.070575

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2015 Vol.18 No.3, pp.199 - 209

Received: 20 Oct 2014
Accepted: 10 Feb 2015
Published online: 10 Jul 2015 *

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