Chrominance restoration from luminance by statistics matching

This paper deals with a problem existing in art restoration. More precisely the algorithm that is being presented tries to restore chrominance information onto a gray level image as accurately as possible. The method was developed to try to restore the information of baroque paintings on the ceiling of a church. Those paintings were severely damaged during the Spanish Civil War and the only available information is: (i) an (geometrically distorted) ancient gray level photograph of the whole original painting. (ii) Today´s partial pictures of the remaining portions. (iii) Intact paintings of the same artist, period, and style in other churches. The objective is then to try to obtain as good a hypothesis as possible of the original artwork, using all the available information