Explainable analysis of infrared and visible light image fusion based on deep learning

Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 17;15(1):2223. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-79684-6.

Abstract

Explainability is a very active area of research in machine learning and image processing. This paper aims to investigate the explainability of visible light and infrared image fusion technology in order to enhance the credibility of model understanding and application. Firstly, a multimodal image fusion model was proposed based on the advantages of convolutional neural networks (CNN) for local context extraction and Transformer global attention mechanism. Secondly, to enhance the explainability of the model, the Delta Debugging Fuse Image (DDFImage) algorithm was employed for generating local explanatory information. Finally, we gain deeper insights into the internal workings of the model through feature importance analysis of the generated explanatory fusion images. Comparative analysis with other explainability algorithms demonstrates the superior performance of our algorithm. This comprehensive approach not only improves the explainability of the model but also provides more reference for practical application of the model.

Keywords: Explainability; Image fusion; Local explanations; Machine learning.