Medical image fusion via discrete stationary wavelet transform and an enhanced radial basis function neural network

A novel multimodel medical image fusion framework with edge enhancement and cross-scale transformer

Multimodal medical image fusion (MMIF) integrates complementary information from different imaging modalities to enhance image quality and remove redundant data, benefiting a variety of clinical applications such as tumor detection and organ delineation. However, existing MMIF methods often struggle to preserve sharp edges and maintain high contrast, both of which are critical for accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. To address these limitations, this paper proposes ECFusion, a novel MMIF framework that explicitly incorporates edge prior information and leverages a cross-scale transformer. First, an Edge-Augmented Module (EAM) employs the Sobel operator to extract edge features, thereby improving the representation and preservation of edge details. Second, a Cross-Scale Transformer Fusion Module (CSTF) with a Hierarchical Cross-Scale Embedding Layer (HCEL) captures multi-scale contextual information and enhances the global consistency of fused images. Additionally, a multi-path fusion strategy is introduced to disentangle deep and shallow features, mitigating feature loss during fusion. We conduct extensive experiments on the AANLIB dataset, evaluating CT-MRI, PET-MRI, and SPECT-MRI fusion tasks. Compared with state-of-the-art methods (U2Fusion, EMFusion, SwinFusion, and CDDFuse), ECFusion produces fused images with clearer edges and higher contrast. Quantitative results further highlight improvements in mutual information (MI), structural similarity (Qabf, SSIM), and visual perception (VIF, Qcb, Qcv).

Effective image fusion strategies in scientific signal processing disciplines: Application to cancer and carcinoma treatment planning

Multimodal medical image fusion is a perennially prominent research topic that can obtain informative medical images and aid radiologists in diagnosing and treating disease more effectively. However, the recent state-of-the-art methods extract and fuse features by subjectively defining constraints, which easily distort the exclusive information of source images. To overcome these problems and get a better fusion method, this study proposes a 2D data fusion method that uses salient structure extraction (SSE) and a swift algorithm via normalized convolution to fuse different types of medical images. First, salient structure extraction (SSE) is used to attenuate the effect of noise and irrelevant data in the source images by preserving the significant structures. The salient structure extraction is performed to ensure that the pixels with a higher gradient magnitude impact the choices of their neighbors and further provide a way to restore the sharply altered pixels to their neighbors. In addition, a Swift algorithm is used to overcome the excessive pixel values and modify the contrast of the source images. Furthermore, the method proposes an efficient method for performing edge-preserving filtering using normalized convolution. In the end,the fused image are obtained through linear combination of the processed image and the input images based on the properties of the filters. A quantitative function composed of structural loss and region mutual data loss is designed to produce restrictions for preserving data at feature level and the structural level. Extensive experiments on CT-MRI images demonstrate that the proposed algorithm exhibits superior performance when compared to some of the state-of-the-art methods in terms of providing detailed information, edge contour, and overall contrasts.

Medical image fusion with deep neural networks

Medical image fusion aims to fuse multiple images from a single or multiple imaging modes to enhance their corresponding clinical applications in diagnosing and evaluating medical problems, a trend that has attracted increasing attention. However, most recent medical image fusion methods require prior knowledge, making it difficult to select image features. In this paper, we propose a novel deep medical image fusion method based on a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) for directly learning image features from original images. Specifically, source images are first decomposed by low rank representation to obtain the principal and salient components, respectively. Following that, the deep features are extracted from the decomposed principal components via DCNN and fused by a weighted-average rule. Then, considering the complementary between the salient components obtained by the low rank representation, a simple yet effective sum rule is designed to fuse the salient components. Finally, the fused result is obtained by reconstructing the principal and salient components. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms several state-of-the-art medical image fusion approaches in terms of both objective indices and visual quality.

Multimodal medical image fusion using convolutional neural network and extreme learning machine

The emergence of multimodal medical imaging technology greatly increases the accuracy of clinical diagnosis and etiological analysis. Nevertheless, each medical imaging modal unavoidably has its own limitations, so the fusion of multimodal medical images may become an effective solution. In this paper, a novel fusion method on the multimodal medical images exploiting convolutional neural network (CNN) and extreme learning machine (ELM) is proposed. As a typical representative in deep learning, CNN has been gaining more and more popularity in the field of image processing. However, CNN often suffers from several drawbacks, such as high computational costs and intensive human interventions. To this end, the model of convolutional extreme learning machine (CELM) is constructed by incorporating ELM into the traditional CNN model. CELM serves as an important tool to extract and capture the features of the source images from a variety of different angles. The final fused image can be obtained by integrating the significant features together. Experimental results indicate that, the proposed method is not only helpful to enhance the accuracy of the lesion detection and localization, but also superior to the current state-of-the-art ones in terms of both subjective visual performance and objective criteria.