The invention provides a visible light and infrared image fusion algorithm based on non-subsample contourlet transform (NSCT) domain bottom layer visual features.Firstly, visible light and infrared images are subjected to NSCT, high and low frequency subband coefficients of the visible light and the infrared images are obtained, then phase equalization, neighborhood space frequency, neighborhood energy and other information are combined, the pixel active levels of the low frequency subband coefficients are comprehensively measured, fusion weights of the low frequency subband coefficients of the visible light and infrared images are obtained respectively, and therefore low frequency subband coefficients of fusion images are obtained; the pixel active levels of the high frequency subband coefficients are measured through the combination of phase equalization, definition, brightness and other information, fusion weights of the high frequency subband coefficients of the visible light and infrared images are obtained respectively, then high frequency subband coefficients of the fusion images are obtained, finally, NSCT reverse transformation is utilized, and final fusion images are obtained.Detail information of source images can be effectively reserved, and meanwhile useful information of the visible light images and the infrared images is synthesized.