Color-aware fusion of nighttime infrared and visible images

Pixel-level fusion of visible and infrared images has demonstrated promise in enhancing information representation. However, nighttime image fusion remains challenging due to low and uneven lighting. Existing fusion methods neglect the preservation of color-related information at night, resulting in unsatisfactory outcomes with insufficient brightness. This paper presents a novel color image fusion framework to prevent color distortion, thus generating results more aligned with human perception. Firstly, we design an image fusion network to retain color information from visible images under low-light conditions. Secondly, we incorporate mature low-light enhancement technology into the network as a flexible component to produce fusion results under normal illumination. The training process is carefully designed to address potential issues of overexposure or noise amplification. Finally, we utilize knowledge distillation to create a lightweight end-to-end network that directly generates fusion results under normal lighting conditions from pairs of low-light images. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed framework outperforms existing methods in nighttime scenarios. • A novel color fusion framework for nighttime application is proposed. • Propose an LCFN to reduce grayscale effect by fusing color and content synchronously. • New synthesis and loss functions resolve exposure and noise in image enhancement. • Propose a resource-efficient DLN-CFN to conduct fusion from night to normal light.