Method and apparatus for detection and removal of scanned image scratches and dust

摘要

To avoid generating visible artifacts in the image, such as those generated when mildly defective areas are not identified, a system and method for identifying and correcting defects in a digital image including adjusting the pixel values of pixels surrounding the defective pixels are disclosed. The method for correcting defects in a input digital image comprises the steps of identifying the defects to form at least one defect map, generating a region of interest for each defect map, correcting the values of the pixels in each defect map, and adjusting the values of the pixels in each region of interest. ;In one embodiment, the input digital image is filtered with a median filter to generate a filtered image. A difference image is generated by subtracting the filtered image from the input digital image, and the pixels at which the difference image pixel value exceeds a given threshold are identified as defect pixel locations. The defect maps are comprised of adjoining defect pixel locations. The pixel values at the defect pixel locations are replaced with the corresponding filtered image pixel values. A smoothing operation is applied to obtain the adjusted value of the pixels in each region of interest corresponding to each defect map. User input is utilized to further mitigate the effects of uncertainty in defect identification.