Detection of missing data in image sequences

Bright and dark flashes are typical artifacts in degraded motion picture material. The distortion is referred to as “dirt and sparkle” in the motion picture industry. This is caused either by dirt becoming attached to the frames of the film, or by the film material being abraded. The visual result is random patches of the frames having grey level values totally unrelated to the initial information at those sites. To restore the film without causing distortion to areas of the frames that are not affected, the locations of the blotches must be identified. Heuristic and model-based methods for the detection of these missing data regions are presented in this paper, and their action on simulated and real sequences is compared