Image processing for restoration of heavily-corrupted old film sequences

We present robust image processing techniques for the old film restoration tasks of flicker correction and scratch/blotch removal. We present a correction method which first estimates the correction-model parameters from an input old film sequence and then corrects its flickers according to the estimated model. Next, we present methods for scratch/blotch removal. Those distortions are repaired with blending-type filters. For scratch detection we employ the morphological image analysis, whereas for blotch detection we employ our previously presented spatiotemporal continuity analysis. The simulations have demonstrated that our techniques remove flickers, scratches and blotches almost perfectly