To overcome the limitation of noise and edge ringing artifacts in most fusion results,a novel image fusion algorithm based on region dual-channel unit-linking pulse coupled neura l networks (RDU-PCNN) and the nonsubsampled shearlet transform (NSST) is presented.After NSST decomposition, a fusion rule based on RDU-PCNN is used in the low frequency subband and a fusion rule based on discre te cosine transforfm (DCT) is used in the high frequency subbands.The fusion image can be obtained by taking an inverse NSST.Experiment al results show that our proposed algorithm is superior to other fusion algorithms in visual and objectiv e evaluation,when compared with other currently popular or more advanced methods .