Yu Liu （刘羽）

Research Interests

Image processing, computer vision and machine learning. Particularly in image fusion, image restoration,

visual recognition, medical image segmentation, and image/video-based biomedical applications.

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Education

• 2011.09-2016.06, Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Supervisor: Prof. Zengfu Wang .

• 2007.09-2011.06. Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, GPA: 3.97, rank: 1/105.

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Working Experience

• 2022.12-Present, Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology.

• 2019.01-2022.11, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology.

• 2016.07-2018.12, Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology.

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Academic Service

• Associate Editor: IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (2025-Present), IEEE Signal Processing Letters (2022-Present)  

• Editorial Board Member: Information Fusion (2019-Present), Journal of Image and Graphics (in Chinese, 2022-Present)

• Guest Editor: Frontiers in Neuroscience, Entropy, Sensors

• Reviewer: IEEE TPAMI/TIP/TMI/TNNLS/TCSVT/TMM/TCI/TBME/TIM, IJCV, INFFUS, PR, etc.

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Honors and Awards

• 2024 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (科睿唯安全球高被引科学家)

• 2024 National-level Young Talents Program selected (入选国家级青年人才计划)

• 2023 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (科睿唯安全球高被引科学家)

• 2023 Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (爱思唯尔中国高被引学者)

• 2023 Wu Wen Jun AI Science & Technology Award for Excellent Youth (吴文俊人工智能优秀青年奖)

• 2023 Chinese Institute of Electronics Science and Technology Award (Second Class Prize of the Natural Science Category)

• 2022 Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (爱思唯尔中国高被引学者)

• 2022 China Instrument Society Jin Guofan Prize for Excellent Youth

• 2021 Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (爱思唯尔中国高被引学者)

• 2020 Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher (爱思唯尔中国高被引学者)

• 2020 IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society Andi Chi Best Paper Award (Corresponding Author) 

• 2019 Anhui Province Science and Technology Award (Second Class Prize of the Natural Science Category)

• 2017 IET Image Processing Premium (Best Paper) Award (First Author) 

• 2017 Excellent Youth Paper Award by Chinese Society of Biomedical Engineering 

• 2016 Chinses Academy of Sciences, the Zhu Li Yuehua Outstanding Doctoral Scholarship

• 2015 Chinese Academy of Sciences, the President Outstanding Scholarship

• 2014 The Chinese National Scholarship for Excellent Graduate (Doctor) Students

• 2013 The Chinese National Scholarship for Excellent Graduate (Master) Students

• 2010 The 30th GUO Moruo Scholarship (The Highest Award for Undergraduate Students at USTC)

• 2009 The Chinese National Scholarship for Excellent Undergraduate Students

• 2008 The Chinese National Scholarship for Excellent Undergraduate Students

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Selected Publications (* indicates the corresponding author)

1. Huafeng Li, Zengyi Yang, Yafei Zhang, Wei Jia, Zhengtao Yu, Yu Liu*, “MulFS-CAP: Multimodal Fusion-supervised Cross-modality Alignment Perception for Unregistered Infrared-visible Image Fusion,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, in press, 2025. (Code)

2. Yu Shi, Yu Liu*, Juan Cheng, Z. Jane Wang, Xun Chen, “VDMUFusion: A Versatile Diffusion Model-Based Unsupervised Framework for Image Fusion,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 34, pp. 441-454, 2025. (Code)

3. Kecheng Zheng, Juan Cheng, Yu Liu*, “Unfolding coupled convolutional sparse representation for multi-focus image fusion,” Information Fusion, vol. 118, p. 102974, 2025.  (Code)

4. Dingyi Li, Yang Zhang, Yu Liu*, “Lightweight Efficient Rate-Adaptive Network for Compression-Aware Image Rescaling,” IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 32, pp. 691-695, 2025.  (Code)

5. Yu Liu, Zhengzheng Qi, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, "Rethinking the Effectiveness of Objective Evaluation Metrics in Multi-focus Image Fusion: A Statistic-based Approach," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 46, no. 8, pp. 5806-5819, 2024. (Code)

6. Huafeng Li, Junyu Liu, Yafei Zhang, Yu Liu*, “A Deep Learning Framework for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion without Strict Registration,” International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 132, pp. 1625-1644, 2024. (Code)

7. Yu Liu, Chen Yu, Juan Cheng, Z. Jane Wang, Xun Chen, "MM-Net: A MixFormer-Based Multi-Scale Network for Anatomical and Functional Image Fusion," IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 33, pp. 2197-2212, 2024. (Code)

8. Dingyi Li, Yu Liu*, Zengfu Wang, Jian Yang, “Video Rescaling with Recurrent Diffusion,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 34, no. 10, pp. 9386-9399, 2024. (Code)

9. Yu Liu, Yize Ma, Zhiqin Zhu, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, “TransSea: Hybrid CNN-Transformer With Semantic Awareness for 3-D Brain Tumor Segmentation,” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 73, p. 2521316, 2024.

10. Yuhang Chen, Aiping Liu, Yu Liu*, Zhiyang He, Cong Liu, Xun Chen*, “Multi-Dimensional Medical Image Fusion With Complex Sparse Representation,” IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 71, no. 9, pp. 2728-2739, 2024. (Code)

11. Zhiqin Zhu, Ziyu Wang, Guanqiu Qi, Neal Mazur, Pan Yang, Yu Liu*, “Brain tumor segmentation in MRI with multi-modality spatial information enhancement and boundary shape correction,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 153, p. 110553, 2024.  (ESI Highly Cited Paper)

12. Huafeng Li, Ming Yuan, Jinxing Li, Yu Liu, Guangming Lu, Yong Xu, Zhengtao Yu, David Zhang, "Focus Affinity Perception and Super-Resolution Embedding for Multi-Focus Image Fusion," IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, in press, 2024.

13. Xiaowen Zhang, Aiping Liu, Gang Yang, Yu Liu, Xun Chen, “SIMFusion: A semantic information-guided modality-specific fusion network for MR Images,” Information Fusion, vol. 112, p. 102560, 2024. (Code)

14. Ting Lv, Chuanming Ji, Hong Jiang, Yu Liu, “HF2TNet: A Hierarchical Fusion Two-stage Training Network for Infrared and Visible Image Fusion,” IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 31, pp. 3164-3168, 2024.

15. Yuhang Chen, Yu Liu, Rabab K. Ward, Xun Chen, “Multi-focus Image Fusion With Complex Sparse Representation,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 24, no. 21, pp. 34744-34755, 2024. 

16. Zhiqin Zhu, Xianyu He, Guanqiu Qi, Yuanyuan Li, Baisen Cong, Yu Liu*, “Brain tumor segmentation based on the fusion of deep semantics and edge information in multimodal MRI,” Information Fusion, vol. 91, pp. 376-387, 2023. (ESI Hot Paper, ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

17. Yu Liu, Haihang Li, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, “MSCAF-Net: A General Framework for Camouflaged Object Detection via Learning Multi-Scale Context-Aware Features,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 33, no. 9, pp. 4934-3947, 2023. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code) 

18. Yu Liu, Zhigang Yang, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, “Multi-Exposure Image Fusion via Multi-scale and Context-aware Feature Learning,” IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 30, pp. 100-104, 2023. (Code)

19. Yu Liu, Yi Wei, Chang Li, Juan Cheng, Rencheng Song, Xun Chen, “Bi-CapsNet: A Binary Capsule Network for EEG-based Emotion Recognition,” IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 1319-1330, 2023. 

20. Wei Tang, Fazhi He, Yu Liu, Yansong Duan, Tongzhen Si, “DATFuse: Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Dual Attention Transformer,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, vol. 33, no. 7, pp. 3159-3172, 2023. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

21. Yi Wei, Yu Liu*, Chang Li, Juan Cheng, Rencheng Song, Xun Chen, “TC-Net: A Transformer Capsule Network for EEG-based Emotion Recognition,” Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 152, p. 106463, 2023. 

22. Yu Liu, Wenyu Zhu, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, “Multi-modal MR image super-resolution with residual dense attention network,” Journal of Image and Graphics, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 248-259, 2023. (In Chinese) 

23. Lei Wang, Zhengzheng Qi, Yu Liu*, “The review of multi-focus image fusion methods based on deep learning,” Journal of Image and Graphics, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 80-101, 2023. (in Chinese) 

24. Wei Tang, Fazhi He, Yu Liu, “YDTR: Infrared and Visible Image Fusion via Y-shape Dynamic Transformer,” IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, vol. 25, pp. 5413-5428, 2023.  (ESI Highly Cited Paper)  (Code)

25. Wei Tang, Fazhi He, Yu Liu, “TCCFusion: An Infrared and Visible Image Fusion Method based on Transformer and Cross Correlation,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 137, p. 109295, 2023. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) 

26. Wei Tao, Chang Li, Rencheng Song, Juan Cheng, Yu Liu, Feng Wan, Xun Chen, “EEG-based emotion recognition via channel-wise attention and self attention,” IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 382-393, 2023. (ESI Hot Paper, ESI Highly Cited Paper) 

27. Jing Zhang, Yu Liu, Aiping Liu, Qingguo Xie, Rabab Ward, Z. Jane Wang, Xun Chen, "Multi-modal Image Fusion via Self-supervised Transformer," IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 9796-9807, 2023.

28. Yu Liu, Hao Zhao, Rencheng Song, Xudong Chen, Chang Li, Xun Chen, “SOM-Net: Unrolling the Subspace-based Optimization for Solving Full-wave Inverse Scattering Problems,” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 60, p. 2007715, 2022. 

29. Yu Liu, Fuhao Mu, Yu Shi, Xun Chen, “SF-Net: A Multi-task Model for Brain Tumor Segmentation in Multimodal MRI via Image Fusion,” IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 29, pp. 1799-1803, 2022. (Code)

30. Yu Liu, Lei Wang, Huafeng Li, Xun Chen, “Multi-focus image fusion with deep residual learning and focus property detection,” Information Fusion, vol. 86-87, pp. 1-16, 2022. (Code)   

31. Yu Liu, Yu Shi, Fuhao Mu, Juan Cheng, Chang Li, Xun Chen, “Multimodal MRI Volumetric Data Fusion with Convolutional Neural Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 71, p. 4006015, 2022. (Code)

32. Yu Liu, Yu Shi, Fuhao Mu, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, “Glioma Segmentation-Oriented Multi-modal MR Image Fusion with Adversarial Learning,” IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, vol. 9, no. 8, pp. 1528-1531, 2022. (Code)

33. Wei Tang, Fazhi He, Yu Liu, Yansong Duan, “MATR: Multimodal Medical Image Fusion via Multiscale Adaptive Transformer,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 31, pp. 5134-5149, 2022. (ESI Highly Cited Paper)  (Code)

34. Yu Liu, Lei Wang, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, “Multiscale feature interactive network for multifocus image fusion,” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 70, p. 5019316, 2021. (Code)

35. Rencheng Song, Qiao Zhou, Yu Liu*, Chang Li, Xun Chen, “A convolutional sparsity regularization for solving inverse scattering problems,” IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, vol. 20, no. 12, pp. 2285-2289, 2021.

36. Wei Tang, Yu Liu*, Juan Cheng, Chang Li, Xun Chen, “Green fluorescent protein and phase contrast image fusion via detail preserving cross network,” IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, vol. 7, pp. 584-597, 2021. (Code)

37. Huafeng Li, Yueliang Cen, Yu Liu*, Xun Chen, Zhengtao Yu, “Different input resolutions and arbitrary output resolution: A meta learning-based deep framework for infrared and visible image fusion,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 30, pp. 4070-4083, 2021. (Code)

38. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Aiping Liu, Rabab. K. Ward, Z. Jane Wang, “Recent advances in sparse representation based medical image fusion,” IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 45-53, 2021. (Invited Paper)

39. Juan Cheng, Meiyao Chen, Chang Li, Yu Liu, Rencheng Song, Aiping Liu, Xun Chen, “Emotion recognition from multi-channel EEG via deep forest,” IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 453-464, 2021. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) 

40. Yu Liu, Lei Wang, Juan Cheng, Chang Li, Xun Chen, “Multi-focus image fusion: A survey of the state of the art,” Information Fusion, vol. 64, pp. 71-91, 2020. (Invited Paper, ESI Highly Cited Paper) (A Benchmark for MFIF)

41. Yu Liu, Chao Zhang, Chang Li, Juan Cheng, Yadong Zhang, Huiqin Xu, Tao Song, Liang Zhao, Xun Chen, “A practical PET/CT data visualization method with dual-threshold PET colorization and image fusion,” Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 126, p. 104050, 2020. (Code)

42. Yu Liu, Yufeng Ding, Chang Li, Juan Cheng, Rencheng Song, Feng Wan, Xun Chen, “Multi-channel EEG-based emotion recognition via a multi-level features guided capsule network,” Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 123, p. 103927, 2020. (Code)

43. Yu Zhang, Yu Liu, Peng Sun, Han Yan, Xiaolin Zhao, Li Zhang, “IFCNN: A general image fusion framework based on convolutional neural network,” Information Fusion, vol. 54, pp. 99-118, 2020. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

44. Wei Tang, Yu Liu*, Juan Cheng, Chang Li, Hu Peng, Xun Chen, “A phase congruency-based green fluorescent protein and phase contrast image fusion method in nonsubsampled shearlet transform domain,” Microscopy Research and Technique, vol. 83, no. 10, pp. 1225-1234, 2020. (Best Paper of the year 2020)

45. Mingyao Zheng, Guanqiu Qi, Zhiqing Zhu, Yuanyuan Li, Hongyan Wei, Yu Liu, “Image dehazing by an artificial image fusion method based on adaptive structure decomposition,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 20, no. 14, pp. 8062-8072, 2020. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

46. Ming Yin, Xiaoning Liu, Yu Liu*, Xun Chen, “Medical image fusion with parameter-adaptive pulse coupled neural network in nonsubsampled shearlet transform domain,” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 49-64, 2019. (IEEE TIM Andy Chi Best Paper Award, ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

47. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Rabab Ward, Z. Jane Wang, “Medical image fusion via convolutional sparsity based morphological component analysis,” IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 485-489, 2019. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

48. Yu Liu, Chao Zhang, Juan Cheng, Xun Chen, Z. Jane Wang, “A multi-scale data fusion framework for bone age assessment with convolutional neural networks,” Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 108, pp. 161-173, 2019.

49. Dingyi Li, Yu Liu, Zengfu Wang, “Video super-resolution using non-simultaneous fully recurrent convolutional network,” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 1342-1355, 2019.

50. Lei Ma, Yu Liu, Xueliang Zhang, Yuanxin Ye, Gaofei Yin, Brian Alan Johoson, “Deep learning in remote sensing applications: A meta-analysis and review,” ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, vol. 152, pp. 166-177, 2019. (ESI Hot Paper, ESI Highly Cited Paper)

51. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Zengfu Wang, Z.Jane Wang, RababWard, Xuesong Wang, “Deep learning for pixel-level image fusion: recent advances and future prospects,” Information Fusion, vol. 42, pp. 158-173, 2018. (Invited Paper, ESI Highly Cited Paper)

52. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Juan Cheng, Hu Peng, Zengfu Wang, “Infrared and visible image fusion with convolutional neural networks,” International Journal of Wavelets, Multiresolution and Information Processing, vol. 16, no. 3, 1850018: 1-20, 2018. (ESI Highly Cited Paper)  (Code)

53. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Hu Peng, Zengfu Wang, “Multi-focus image fusion with a deep convolutional neural network,” Information Fusion, vol. 36, pp. 191–207, 2017. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

54. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Juan Cheng, Hu Peng, “A medical image fusion method based on convolutional neural networks,” 20th International Conference on Information Fusion (ICIF), Xi’an, China, July 10-13, 2017, pp. 1070-1076. (Code)

55. Yu Liu, Xun Chen, Rabab Ward, Z.Jane Wang, “Image Fusion With Convolutional Sparse Representation,” IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 23, no. 12, pp. 1882-1886, 2016. (ESI Highly Cited Paper)  (Code)

56. Yu Liu, Zengfu Wang, “Dense SIFT for ghost-free multi-exposure fusion,” Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 31, pp. 208-224, 2015. (Code)

57. Yu Liu, Shuping Liu, Zengfu Wang, “A general framework for image fusion based on multi-scale transform and sparse representation,” Information Fusion, vol. 24, pp. 147-164, 2015. (ESI Hot Paper, ESI Highly Cited Paper) (MST-SR-Fusion-Toolbox)

58. Yu Liu, Zengfu Wang, “Simultaneous image fusion and denoising with adaptive sparse representation,” IET Image Processing, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 347-357, 2015. (2017 Premium Award for the Best Paper in IET Image Processing, ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

59. Yu Liu, Shuping Liu, Zengfu Wang, “Multi-focus image fusion with dense SIFT,” Information Fusion, vol. 23, pp. 139-155, 2015. (ESI Highly Cited Paper) (Code)

60. Yu Liu, Zengfu Wang, “Multi-focus image fusion based on wavelet transform and adaptive block,” Journal of Image and Graphics, vol. 18, no. 11, pp. 1435-1444, 2013. (In Chinese) (Code)