  Image fusion in visual sensor networks (VSNs) aims to combine information
from multiple images of the same scene in order to transform a single image
with more information. Image fusion methods based on discrete cosine transform
(DCT) are less complex and time-saving in DCT based standards of image and
video which makes them more suitable for VSN applications. In this paper, an
efficient algorithm for the fusion of multi-focus images in the DCT domain is
proposed. The Sum of modified laplacian (SML) of corresponding blocks of source
images is used as a contrast criterion and blocks with the larger value of SML
are absorbed to output images. The experimental results on several images show
the improvement of the proposed algorithm in terms of both subjective and
objective quality of fused image relative to other DCT based techniques.
