# Conti-Fuse: A Novel Continuous Decomposition-based Fusion Framework for Infrared and Visible Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04689 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04689/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Blind Image Quality Assessment via Vision-Language Correspondence: A Multitask Learning Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14968/) (2023)
- [TOPIQ: A Top-down Approach from Semantics to Distortions for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03060/) (2023)
- [DDFM: Denoising Diffusion Model for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06840/) (2023)
- [RFN-Nest: An end-to-end residual fusion network for infrared and visible images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04286/) (2021)
- [DIDFuse: Deep Image Decomposition for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09210/) (2020)
- [MDLatLRR: A novel decomposition method for infrared and visible image fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02291/) (2018)
- [An Interactively Reinforced Paradigm for Joint Infrared-Visible Image Fusion and Saliency Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09999/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [One Model for ALL: Low-Level Task Interaction Is a Key to Task-Agnostic Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19854/) (2025)
- [Residual Prior-driven Frequency-aware Network for Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06735/) (2025)
- [Towards Unified Semantic and Controllable Image Fusion: A Diffusion Transformer Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07170/) (2025)
- [Multi-Modal Image Fusion via Intervention-Stable Feature Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23272/) (2026)
- [One Latent Space to Rule All Degradations: Unifying Restoration Knowledge for Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07033/) (2025)
- [SGDFuse: SAM-Guided Diffusion Model for High-Fidelity Infrared and Visible Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05264/) (2025)
- [AngularFuse: A Closer Look at Angle-based Perception for Spatial-Sensitive Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12260/) (2025)
- [MAVFusion: Efficient Infrared and Visible Video Fusion via Motion-Aware Sparse Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01958/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

For better explore the relations of inter-modal and inner-modal, even in deep learning fusion framework, the concept of decomposition plays a crucial role. However, the previous decomposition strategies (base & detail or low-frequency & high-frequency) are too rough to present the common features and the unique features of source modalities, which leads to a decline in the quality of the fused images. The existing strategies treat these relations as a binary system, which may not be suitable for the complex generation task (e.g. image fusion). To address this issue, a continuous decomposition-based fusion framework (Conti-Fuse) is proposed. Conti-Fuse treats the decomposition results as few samples along the feature variation trajectory of the source images, extending this concept to a more general state to achieve continuous decomposition. This novel continuous decomposition strategy enhances the representation of complementary information of inter-modal by increasing the number of decomposition samples, thus reducing the loss of critical information. To facilitate this process, the continuous decomposition module (CDM) is introduced to decompose the input into a series continuous components. The core module of CDM, State Transformer (ST), is utilized to efficiently capture the complementary information from source modalities. Furthermore, a novel decomposition loss function is also designed which ensures the smooth progression of the decomposition process while maintaining linear growth in time complexity with respect to the number of decomposition samples. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposed Conti-Fuse achieves superior performance compared to the state-of-the-art fusion methods.