AngularFuse: A Closer Look at Angle-based Perception for Spatial-Sensitive Multi-Modality Image Fusion

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Xiaopeng, Lin, Yupei, Zhang, Sen, Wang, Xiao, Shi, Yukai, Lin, Liang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912646008143872
author Liu, Xiaopeng
Lin, Yupei
Zhang, Sen
Wang, Xiao
Shi, Yukai
Lin, Liang
author_facet Liu, Xiaopeng
Lin, Yupei
Zhang, Sen
Wang, Xiao
Shi, Yukai
Lin, Liang
contents Visible-infrared image fusion is crucial in key applications such as autonomous driving and nighttime surveillance. Its main goal is to integrate multimodal information to produce enhanced images that are better suited for downstream tasks. Although deep learning based fusion methods have made significant progress, mainstream unsupervised approaches still face serious challenges in practical applications. Existing methods mostly rely on manually designed loss functions to guide the fusion process. However, these loss functions have obvious limitations. On one hand, the reference images constructed by existing methods often lack details and have uneven brightness. On the other hand, the widely used gradient losses focus only on gradient magnitude. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an angle-based perception framework for spatial-sensitive image fusion (AngularFuse). At first, we design a cross-modal complementary mask module to force the network to learn complementary information between modalities. Then, a fine-grained reference image synthesis strategy is introduced. By combining Laplacian edge enhancement with adaptive histogram equalization, reference images with richer details and more balanced brightness are generated. Last but not least, we introduce an angle-aware loss, which for the first time constrains both gradient magnitude and direction simultaneously in the gradient domain. AngularFuse ensures that the fused images preserve both texture intensity and correct edge orientation. Comprehensive experiments on the MSRS, RoadScene, and M3FD public datasets show that AngularFuse outperforms existing mainstream methods with clear margin. Visual comparisons further confirm that our method produces sharper and more detailed results in challenging scenes, demonstrating superior fusion capability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_12260
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AngularFuse: A Closer Look at Angle-based Perception for Spatial-Sensitive Multi-Modality Image Fusion
Liu, Xiaopeng
Lin, Yupei
Zhang, Sen
Wang, Xiao
Shi, Yukai
Lin, Liang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Image and Video Processing
Visible-infrared image fusion is crucial in key applications such as autonomous driving and nighttime surveillance. Its main goal is to integrate multimodal information to produce enhanced images that are better suited for downstream tasks. Although deep learning based fusion methods have made significant progress, mainstream unsupervised approaches still face serious challenges in practical applications. Existing methods mostly rely on manually designed loss functions to guide the fusion process. However, these loss functions have obvious limitations. On one hand, the reference images constructed by existing methods often lack details and have uneven brightness. On the other hand, the widely used gradient losses focus only on gradient magnitude. To address these challenges, this paper proposes an angle-based perception framework for spatial-sensitive image fusion (AngularFuse). At first, we design a cross-modal complementary mask module to force the network to learn complementary information between modalities. Then, a fine-grained reference image synthesis strategy is introduced. By combining Laplacian edge enhancement with adaptive histogram equalization, reference images with richer details and more balanced brightness are generated. Last but not least, we introduce an angle-aware loss, which for the first time constrains both gradient magnitude and direction simultaneously in the gradient domain. AngularFuse ensures that the fused images preserve both texture intensity and correct edge orientation. Comprehensive experiments on the MSRS, RoadScene, and M3FD public datasets show that AngularFuse outperforms existing mainstream methods with clear margin. Visual comparisons further confirm that our method produces sharper and more detailed results in challenging scenes, demonstrating superior fusion capability.
title AngularFuse: A Closer Look at Angle-based Perception for Spatial-Sensitive Multi-Modality Image Fusion
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12260