A Review of Feature and Data Fusion with Medical Images

The fusion techniques that utilize multiple feature sets to form new features that are often more robust and contain useful information for future processing are referred to as feature fusion. The term data fusion is applied to the class of techniques used for combining decisions obtained from multiple feature sets to form global decisions. Feature and data fusion interchangeably represent two important classes of techniques that have proved to be of practical importance in a wide range of medical imaging problemsComment: Multisensor Data Fusion: From Algorithm and Architecture Design to Applications, CRC Press, 2015. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1401.016

Medical Image Fusion: A survey of the state of the art

Medical image fusion is the process of registering and combining multiple images from single or multiple imaging modalities to improve the imaging quality and reduce randomness and redundancy in order to increase the clinical applicability of medical images for diagnosis and assessment of medical problems. Multi-modal medical image fusion algorithms and devices have shown notable achievements in improving clinical accuracy of decisions based on medical images. This review article provides a factual listing of methods and summarizes the broad scientific challenges faced in the field of medical image fusion. We characterize the medical image fusion research based on (1) the widely used image fusion methods, (2) imaging modalities, and (3) imaging of organs that are under study. This review concludes that even though there exists several open ended technological and scientific challenges, the fusion of medical images has proved to be useful for advancing the clinical reliability of using medical imaging for medical diagnostics and analysis, and is a scientific discipline that has the potential to significantly grow in the coming years.Comment: Information Fusion, 201