# RFN-Nest: An end-to-end residual fusion network for infrared and visible images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.04286 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04286/

## Key facts

- Cited by 109 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 59 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [DenseFuse: A Fusion Approach to Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08361/) (2018)
- [RGB-T Object Tracking:Benchmark and Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08982/) (2018)
- [DeepFuse: A Deep Unsupervised Approach for Exposure Fusion with Extreme Exposure Image Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07384/) (2017)
- [NestFuse: An Infrared and Visible Image Fusion Architecture based on Nest Connection and Spatial/Channel Attention Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00328/) (2020)
- [RGB-T Image Saliency Detection via Collaborative Graph Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.06741/) (2019)
- [MDLatLRR: A novel decomposition method for infrared and visible image fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02291/) (2018)
- [Infrared and Visible Image Fusion using a Deep Learning Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06992/) (2018)
- [Multi-focus Image Fusion using dictionary learning and Low-Rank Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08355/) (2018)
- [Infrared and Visible Image Fusion with ResNet and zero-phase component analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07119/) (2018)
- [AFAT: Adaptive Failure-Aware Tracker for Robust Visual Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.13708/) (2020)
- [Image Fusion With Cosparse Analysis Operator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05240/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 109)

- [Target-aware Dual Adversarial Learning and a Multi-scenario Multi-Modality Benchmark to Fuse Infrared and Visible for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16220/) (2022)
- [CDDFuse: Correlation-Driven Dual-Branch Feature Decomposition for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.14461/) (2022)
- [DDFM: Denoising Diffusion Model for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06840/) (2023)
- [Equivariant Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11443/) (2023)
- [LRRNet: A Novel Representation Learning Guided Fusion Network for Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05172/) (2023)
- [FusionMamba: Dynamic Feature Enhancement for Multimodal Image Fusion with Mamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09498/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised Misaligned Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Cross-Modality Image Generation and Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11876/) (2022)
- [CoCoNet: Coupled Contrastive Learning Network with Multi-level Feature Ensemble for Multi-modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10960/) (2022)
- [Task-Customized Mixture of Adapters for General Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12494/) (2024)
- [Multi-modal Gated Mixture of Local-to-Global Experts for Dynamic Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01392/) (2023)
- [A Task-guided, Implicitly-searched and Meta-initialized Deep Model for Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15862/) (2023)
- [Infrared and Visible Image Fusion: From Data Compatibility to Task Adaption](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10761/) (2025)
- [CrossFuse: A Novel Cross Attention Mechanism based Infrared and Visible Image Fusion Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10581/) (2024)
- [An Interactively Reinforced Paradigm for Joint Infrared-Visible Image Fusion and Saliency Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09999/) (2023)
- [MambaDFuse: A Mamba-based Dual-phase Model for Multi-modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08406/) (2024)
- [DCEvo: Discriminative Cross-Dimensional Evolutionary Learning for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17673/) (2025)
- [Text-DiFuse: An Interactive Multi-Modal Image Fusion Framework based on Text-modulated Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23905/) (2024)
- [TGFuse: An Infrared and Visible Image Fusion Approach Based on Transformer and Generative Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10147/) (2022)
- [Exploring Fusion Strategies for Accurate RGBT Visual Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08673/) (2022)
- [TextFusion: Unveiling the Power of Textual Semantics for Controllable Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14209/) (2023)
- [SwinFuse: A Residual Swin Transformer Fusion Network for Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11436/) (2022)
- [Task-driven Image Fusion with Learnable Fusion Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03240/) (2024)
- [Image Fusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.09011/) (2021)
- [E2E-MFD: Towards End-to-End Synchronous Multimodal Fusion Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09323/) (2024)
- [Improving Misaligned Multi-modality Image Fusion with One-stage Progressive Dense Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11165/) (2023)
- [ReFusion: Learning Image Fusion from Reconstruction with Learnable Loss via Meta-Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07943/) (2023)
- [MaeFuse: Transferring Omni Features with Pretrained Masked Autoencoders for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Guided Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11016/) (2024)
- [Conditional Controllable Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01573/) (2024)
- [FusionBooster: A Unified Image Fusion Boosting Paradigm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05970/) (2023)
- [TSJNet: A Multi-modality Target and Semantic Awareness Joint-driven Image Fusion Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01212/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the image fusion field, the design of deep learning-based fusion methods is far from routine. It is invariably fusion-task specific and requires a careful consideration. The most difficult part of the design is to choose an appropriate strategy to generate the fused image for a specific task in hand. Thus, devising learnable fusion strategy is a very challenging problem in the community of image fusion. To address this problem, a novel end-to-end fusion network architecture (RFN-Nest) is developed for infrared and visible image fusion. We propose a residual fusion network (RFN) which is based on a residual architecture to replace the traditional fusion approach. A novel detail-preserving loss function, and a feature enhancing loss function are proposed to train RFN. The fusion model learning is accomplished by a novel two-stage training strategy. In the first stage, we train an auto-encoder based on an innovative nest connection (Nest) concept. Next, the RFN is trained using the proposed loss functions. The experimental results on public domain data sets show that, compared with the existing methods, our end-to-end fusion network delivers a better performance than the state-of-the-art methods in both subjective and objective evaluation. The code of our fusion method is available at https://github.com/hli1221/imagefusion-rfn-nest