Atmospheric attenuation reduction through multi-sensor fusion

The visualization of a scene in murky atmospheric conditions is improved by fusing multiple images. A key feature of this system is the use of the wavelet domain in the fusion process. Many possible fusion formulas in this domain exist and to find the "best" formula, we formulate an optimization problem. We assume a set of training data consisting of a sequence of images with the presence of atmospheric effects and the corresponding image with no atmospheric effects present (ground truth). Next, we perform a search over the parameter space of our "generic fusion formula" attempting to minimize the error between the original ground truth image and the image created by fusing the noisy data. Using the resulting "best" fusion formula, we have created a system for pixel level fusion. Experimental results are shown and discussed. Possible applications of this system include processing of outdoor security system data, filters for outdoor vehicle image data and use in heads-up displays.