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• This paper proposes an unsupervised deep learning model. • This paper proposes an optimized sparse representation method. • This paper proposes a new image fusion algorithm based on unsupervised deep learning-optimized sparse representation. The image fusion method based on deep learning has problems such as the supervised learning of the model, the edge and noise of the fused image, and the setting of the image fusion weight map. To solve these problems, this paper proposes an end-to-end unsupervised deep learning model that performs one-to-many focus image fusion. It solves the training problem encountered by supervised deep learning models while avoiding the unreasonable image fusion weight maps. In addition, this paper proposes an optimized sparse representation method that divides an image into a target area and a background area. Then, it uses super complete dictionary learning to obtain a sparse representation of the image background area. This approach makes the proposed unsupervised deep learning image fusion method robust to noise. Finally, using this method to carry out image fusion experiments, the results show that the quality evaluation indicators of the fused image obtained by this method substantially outperform those of both mainstream machine learning and deep learning image fusion methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]