Inpainting Thick Image Regions using Isophote Propagation

Most existing methods for inpainting structure images fail in handling thick unknown regions, resulting in over-smoothing effects in the filled areas. In this paper, a novel inpainting algorithm, termed as isophote propagation, is presented to solve the problem. The algorithm propagates isophote information while maintaining the continuity of isophotes directions. It is simple and fast, and performs better in preserving sharp edges than existing algorithms. Effectiveness of the algorithm is demonstrated in experiments.