Extraction of non-binary blotch mattes

Automated blotch removal is important in film restoration and typically involves a detection/interpolation step. Current algorithms model the corruption as a binary mixture between the original, clean images and an opaque (dirt) field. This typically causes incomplete blotch removal that manifests as blotch haloes in reconstruction. This paper proposes a new approach by modeling the corruption as a continuous mixture between the two components and generating a solution using a Bayesian framework. We use novel priors, propose a computationally efficient scheme for implementation and our results show more complete blotch reconstruction.