In order to overcome the problem of phantom shadow at the edge of the object in the process of infrared and visible image fusion, an image fusion method based on divide region universe algorithm (DRUA) is proposed. Firstly, the space model of the universe is established, the universe in the core region is communicated with each other bilaterally, and the universe in the non-core region is only communicated with each other unilaterally. Secondly, the connected universe connecting the core region and the non-core region forms a neighborhood relationship between the core region and the non-core region. Thirdly, the detail layer, the basic layer and the saliency layer of the infrared and visible images are obtained respectively, and different fusion strategies are used for different layers. Finally, the fusion process of universe optimization is given. Experimental results show that the proposed method has more thermal target and scene information, and the visual effect is consistent with the visual characteristics of the human eye. Compared with other algorithms, the mutual information, standard deviation, spatial frequency, and average gradient index are increased by 17.57%, 14.80%, 34.16% and 21.01%, respectively, so that it is better than other algorithms.