Image fusion

Image fusion is a form of representation, which is used for example in meteorology and medical imaging. Image series of different image modalities are combined to form a new series to combine the advantages of each. The fused image contains mostly in the background, the image information of a modality with high resolution anatomical detail, such as by computed tomography or magnetresonanztomografischen recordings.

In the foreground is a series of images (often colored) superimposed or displayed, containing the functional image data with little anatomical information. These may be, for example positron emission tomography, SPECT, or fMRI recordings. For weather maps air pressure gradient, wind speed or cloud cover can be placed over a map to make the data in this way regional assignable.

If the assignment of corresponding image points to fusionizing imaging modalities can not be done with an identical acquisition parameters, image registration must be done before image fusion. For this purpose, there are various mathematical methods.