Nonlinear Flicker Compensation for Archived Film Sequences Using Motion-Compensated Graylevel Tracing

We present a novel approach for the compensation of temporal brightness variations (commonly referred to as flicker) in archived film sequences. The proposed method is motivated by fundamental principles of photographic image registration and provides a substantial level of adaptation to temporal but also spatial variations of picture brightness. Additionally, our scheme provides an efficient mechanism for the adaptive estimation of flicker compensation profile, which makes it suitable for the compensation of long duration film sequences while it addresses problems arising from scene motion and illumination using a novel motion-compensated graylevel tracing approach. We present experimental evidence which suggests that our method offers high levels of performance and compares favorably with competing state-of-the-art techniques for flicker compensation.