Perceptual Contrast Metric for Visible and Infrared Gray Fusion Images

To evaluate the fusion image quality scientifically for fusion technology research and equipment applications, image contrast was taken as an important quality metric of dual-band gray fusion images. To solve the problem in the existing contrast metrics, unconsidering human visual system and affecting coherence between the predictions and the human perceptions, an objective perceptual contrast metric was proposed based on isotropic local contrast model as well as the introduction of the human luminance masking effect. The simulated gray images and the observer evaluation scores for 15 groups of real scene gray fusion images were used to test the proposed model. Experimental results show that the proposed perceptual contrast metric is more closely matched to the human vision perception than existing methods and can evaluate the dual-band gray fusion image perceptual contrast effectively.