Chinese Optics, Volume. 18, Issue 2, 317(2025)

Infrared and visible image fusion guided by cross-domain interactive attention and contrastive learning

Jing DI1、*, Chan LIANG1, Ji-zhao LIU2, and Jing LIAN1
Author Affiliations
  • 1School of Electronic & Information Engineering, Lan Zhou Jiao Tong University, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • 2School of Information Science & Engineering, Lan Zhou University, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • show less

    Aiming at the problems in existing infrared and visible image fusion methods, such as the difficulty in fully extracting and preserving the source image details, contrast, and blurred texture details, this paper proposes an infrared and visible image fusion method guided by cross-domain interactive attention and contrastive learning. First, a dual-branch skip connection detail enhancement network was designed to separately extract and enhance detail information from infrared and visible images, using skip connections to prevent information loss and generate enhanced detail images. Next, a fusion network combining a dual-branch encoder and cross-domain interactive attention module was constructed to ensure sufficient feature interaction during fusion, and the decoder was used to reconstruct the final fused image. Then, a contrastive learning network was introduced, performing shallow and deep attribute and content contrastive learning from the contrastive learning block, optimizing feature representation, and further improving the performance of the fusion network. Finally, to constrain network training and retain the inherent features of the source images, a contrast-based loss function was designed to assist in preserving source image information during fusion. The proposed method is qualitatively and quantitatively compared with current state-of-the-art fusion methods. Experimental results show that the eight objective evaluation metrics of the proposed method significantly outperform the comparison methods on the TNO, MSRS, and RoadSence datasets. The fused images produced by the proposed method have rich detail textures, enhanced sharpness, and contrast, effectively improving target recognition and environmental perception in real-world applications such as road traffic and security surveillance.

    Keywords
    Tools

    Get Citation

    Copy Citation Text

    Jing DI, Chan LIANG, Ji-zhao LIU, Jing LIAN. Infrared and visible image fusion guided by cross-domain interactive attention and contrastive learning[J]. Chinese Optics, 2025, 18(2): 317

    Download Citation

    EndNote(RIS)BibTexPlain Text
    Save article for my favorites
    Paper Information

    Category:

    Received: Aug. 14, 2024

    Accepted: --

    Published Online: May. 19, 2025

    The Author Email:

    DOI:10.37188/CO.2024-0147

    Topics