An Efficient Scratches Detection and Inpainting Algorithm for Old Film Restoration

This paper investigates the removal of line scratches from old films and gives a twofold contribution. First, a simple technique for detecting the scratches is proposed. This proposed method firstly applies a linear technique to enhance the scratches, and then detects the scratches using information in frames. Second, the scratch removal is approached as an inpainting problem, and it is solved by using an inpainting algorithm based on p-Laplace operator. In our experiment with old Chinese films, we show that our scheme not only obtains more accurate detection of scratches, but also gives better video quality.