Efficient Methods for Scratch Removal in Image Sequences

Scratches are one of the most frequent defects occurring in digital film restoration, usually intended as missing information in subsequent frames of an image sequence in a vertical area of each frame. In this paper we describe some methods for line scratch removal in digital image sequences, based on the idea of using an image model as simple as possible in order to interpolate scratch pixels, evaluating the displacement of such model from the real model in a neighborhood of the scratch not affected by the defect, and correcting the reconstruction by adding the estimated displacement. Experimental results on real images are shown.