Machine Vision and Applications (2003) 13: 201–212 Machine Vision and Applications c © Springer-Verlag 2003 Motion compensated film restoration

Abstract. Motion picture films are susceptible to local degra-dations such as dust spots. Other deteriorations are global such as intensity and spatial jitter. It is obvious that motion needs to be compensated for before the detection/correction of such lo-cal and dynamic defects. Therefore, we propose a hierarchical motion estimation method ideally suited for high resolution film sequences. This recursive block-based motion estimator relies on an adaptive search strategy and Radon projections to improve processing speed. The localization of dust par-ticles then becomes straightforward. Thus, it is achieved by simple inter-frame differences between the current image and motion compensated successive and preceding frames. How-ever, the detection of spatial and intensity jitter requires a spe-cific process taking advantage of the high temporal correlation in the image sequence. In this paper, we present our motion compensation-based algorithms for removing dust spots, spa-tial and intensity jitter in degraded motion pictures. Exper-imental results are presented showing the usefulness of our motion estimator for film restoration at reasonable computa-tional costs