Automatic blotch removal using a perceptual approach

One of important issue needs attention in the area of old film storage and restoration is blotch handling. In this work, a new proposal including an automatic detection method and inpainting scheme is introduced. First, a technique for automatically detecting blotches based on local changes of pixels on consecutive frames is applied. Specifically, a two-stage Simplified Ranked Order Difference detector is proposed to identify blotches on frames. Next, an improved inpainting was applied to restore the blotches so that it is undetectable by viewers. Our proposal is executed automatically without extenal parameters. The proposal has been tested on a serial of natural images with different sizes and resolutions. Experimental results show that our approach has successfully removed with fairly high accuracy and quite smooth restored blotches. Based on result analysis, the proposal has many potential and applications in the future.