Color fusion of SAR and FLIR images using a natural color transfer technique

Fusion of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and forward looking infrared (FLIR) images is an important subject for aerospace and sensor surveillance. This paper presents a scheme to achieve a natural color image based on the contours feature of SAR and the target region feature of FLIR so that the overall scene recognition and situational awareness can be improved. The SAR and FLIR images are first decomposed into steerable pyramids, and the contour maps in the SAR image and the region maps in the