A Hybrid Approach for Medical Image Fusion using
SVD and PCA
Kusuma J
Dept. of CSE,
Amrita School of Computing, Bengaluru
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India
Kusumagowdaj@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The process of combining the images into
one image called as image fusion. This is
required to get the information from one
image itself instead of getting the
information from multiple images and
making it as one. This also reduces the
randomness and redundancy which is
helpful in medical field and for human
perception also. In this paper we proposed
a new method called SVDPCA to raise the
information present in an image. Here we
selected two different types of images
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) are
taken for this experiment. Initially on 2
input images the SVD is applied then the
PCA method is applied on S matrix that is
the output of SVD to get the resultant
image. To perform the experiment we used
30 image sets and are compared with other
techniques like PCA, SVD and maximum
method. The experiments show that the
proposed method SVDPCA gives best
result.
Keywords: Singular Value
Decomposition, Principal Component
Analysis. Magnetic Resonance Imaging,
Positron Emission Tomography
K N Meera
Dept. of Mathematics
Amrita School of Engineering, Bengaluru
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India
kn_meera@blr.amrita.edu
1. INTRODUCTION
Fusion of images is an important task in
different image processing applications
where the images collected from different
creators. The fusing of the images is done
as we want the content of information in
one single image rather than collecting the
information from many different images.
The images what we took as a input are
collected in varying timings and are taken
from different creators whose physical
features are of different. As the images
contain different features we have to
extract that features and put it in one image
which is helpful for both human vision and
machine processing. The figure 1.1 shows
how the image fusion looks.
Input Image 1 Input Image 2 Fused Image
Figure 1.1 Fusion of 2 images
Many methods have come up nowadays
for this process. There are 2 fusion types:
Spatial Domain (SD) and Transform
Domain (TD). The basic method used for
image fusion is PCA which belongs to SD
method. It is well known for feature
extraction and reducing the dimension and
is used for image fusion. SVD is another
technique to get the features from an
image which is used in different purposes
like recognition of the face, image fusion,
registration of the image etc [1][2]. Here a
new technique is induced by fusing SVD
and PCA. For experiments we have taken
30 image sets and implemented on existing
methods like PCA, maximum method and
SVD. These results are compared with the
proposed method. The results discussed in
this paper show that the new induced
method gives the best result. The paper is
taken in the following way: Section 2
presents the PCA, SVD and Maximum
method. Section 3 gives the hybrid method
SVDPCA. Section 4 presents the result
analysis and Section 5 gives the
conclusion of the work.
2. DIFFERENT FUSION METHODS
2.1 Principal Component Analysis
PCA is a popular technique for analyses of
large datasets which have high number of
features for each observation, increasing
the understandable of data while keeping
the maximum amount of information. It is
a statistical technique for dataset
dimension reduction. This can be done by
linearly transforming the data into new
coordinate system where data variation is
described with few dimensions than the
initial data. Many authors have taken 1st 2
PC’s to plot the data in 2-D and to visually
see the clusters of closely related data
points. It has many applications in many
areas like micro biome studies,
atmospheric science and population
genetics.
Steps followed in PCA:
1. Find the covariance matrix of an input
image.
2. Then from the covariance matric find
the eigenvectors and eigenvalues.
3. The eigenvector with highest eigenvalue
represents the direction of the highest
variance. This helps in finding the 1st
Principal component. The eigenvector with
next eigenvalue represents the remaining
variance direction and it is orthogonal to
the 1st direction. So this helps in finding
the 2nd Principal component. Like this we
can find the n PC’s based on our
requirement.
4. Finally the fusion is done using the
below equation:
FusedImage=PC1*Image1+PC2*Image2
2.2 Singular Value Decomposition
SVD is a method to take out the features
present in the image. SVD on a matrix will
decompose the matrix into 3 matrices. In
that 2 matrices are singular matrices and 1
matrix is diagonal matrix [2]. The singular
matrix gives description of the images like
feature stability, scale invariance etc.
When SVD is applied on a matrix A which
is of m x n will result as follows:
A = UASAVA T
where UA is left singular vectors which
will be of size m x m, VA T is right
singular vectors which is of size n x n and
SA is diagonal matrix which is of size m x
n, the diagonal elements are called as
singular values, which is arranged in
decreasing order. Below is the equation
which gives SVD of a matric:
U S V= SVD(A)
For fusion of images we applied SVD on 2
images but the SVD accepts only two
dimensional image. So the coloured
images is decomposed into 3 channels that
 is red, green and blue so we got it as three Same procedure is done for Green channel
2-D matrices from one single image. Same and Blue channel. Same way fuse the left
procedure for 2nd input image also, there singular vectors and right singular vectors
also we will get three 2-D matrices. So it of particular channel. Then we will end up
will look like: with 3 matrices of each channel. Finally
combine all 3 channels to get the colored
Input image1 fused image[2]. Fusing of all 3 channels is
done as below:
Fusedimage(:,:,1)=red channel matrix
Fusedimage(:,:,2)=green channel matrix
Matrix 1 Matrix 2 Matrix 3 Fusedimage(:,:,3)=blue channel matrix
Red channel Green channel Blue channel So finally the Fused image can be
displayed as imshow(Fusedimage).

Same way the input image 2 also will have

3 matrices. Now SVD is applied on each
matrix[3]. So total 6 matrices so 6 times
SVD is applied. Then combining the
image1’s matrix1 (red channel) singular
matrix with image2’s matrix1 (red
channel) singular matrix to get singular
matrix of fused image for red channel.
2.3 Maximum Method
In this method, the maximum intensity
pixel is selected to put in the fused image.
This is done in each channel of the image.
For this each pixel of input image 1 is
compared with the corresponding pixel of
the input image 2 and the pixel whose
intensity value is maximum that we put in
the fused image, which results in, the
fused image’s every pixel is with
maximum intensity. The general
architecture diagram for all fusion methods
is shown in Figure 2.1.

Image RGB to
Preprocessing Gray

Fusion Gray
Input Image 1 to
Technique
RGB

RGB to Fused Image

Image
Preprocessing Gray

Input Image 2
Figure 2.1 General architecture diagram for all fusion methods.
3. PROPOSED FUSION METHOD
In this paper a new method is approached
called SVDPCA. A hybrid technique by
combining the SVD and PCA methods to
get the best result compared to the existing
methods mentioned in above section. Here
we applied SVD on input images as
explained in above section. After applying
the SVD method we will be having 6
singular matrices, 3 for input image 1 and
3 for input image 2. Then combined the
singular matrices of corresponding
channels[8]. Then we had 3 singular
matrices. Upon that we applied PCA: In
PCA except the first step that is without
finding the covariance matrix the rest of
the steps are applied on three singular
matrices what we got in previous step[9].
At last we will be having three matrices for
each channel of fused image. Finally
combine all these channels as said in
section 2.2 to display the fused
image[13][14]. The Flow diagram of the
proposed method is shown in Figure 3.1.
Image
Input Image1
Preprocessing
Image
Input Image2
Preprocessing
Apply PCA method on singular
matrices of each channel
Finally combine
all 3 channels
Figure 3.1 Flow diagram of proposed method.
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
We took 30 PET and 30 MRI Input
images for experiment. We implemented
existing methods also for comparison. For
measuring we took PSNR, Cross
correlation and Structural similarity
parameters. Out of 30 image sets 23
image sets showed that the proposed
method is best. So we got the accuracy
76.66%. The table 4.1 shows the result for
2 image sets for all fusion methods we
discussed in this paper. The highest values
for each parameter are represented in bold
case. From the table we can see that our
proposed method is best. Figure 4.1 and
4.2 shows the output of different fusion
methods used in this paper with proposed
method output also.
Convert 3D Apply SVD on
to 2D each channel
Convert 3D Apply SVD on
to 2D each channel
Fuse singular matrices of each
channel correspondingly to get
colored Image
Display fused image
Image2
 Table 4.1 Comparative Analysis.

Methods PSNR CC SSIM Val

PCA 11.8864 0.4743 0.5888
Maximum Method 11.0156 0.6867 0.7422

Set 1 SVD 15.6421 0.7208 0.745

SVDPCA(Proposed Method) 18.8252 0.8194 0.9747
PCA 13.7588 0.7118 0.6492
Maximum Method 10.5472 0.6619 0.6208
Set 2
SVD 15.9433 0.8061 0.7256
SVDPCA(Proposed Method) 17.6964 0.8599 0.9177

Input Image 1 Input image 2 PCA

Maximum method SVD SVDPCA

Figure 4.1 Results for Set I image

 Input Image 1 Input Image 2
Maximum Method
Figure 4.2 Results for Set II image
5. CONCLUSION
In this paper, initially the input images are
pre-processed then each image is divided
into three matrices to make it two
dimensional matrix. Then SVD is applied
on each matrix for both the images. After
that the singular matrices are combined
correspondingly for each channel. Then
PCA is applied and finally we got the
fused image. The results also show that the
fusion done by using the proposed method
is best. The objective of fusion is to get the
more data from a single image. That we
achieved here using the proposed method.
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