Image filling-in in a decomposition space

An algorithm for the simultaneous filling-in of texture and structure in regions of missing image information is presented in this paper. The basic idea is to first decompose the image into the sum of two functions with different basic characteristics, and then reconstruct each one of these functions separately with structure and texture filling-in algorithms. The first function used in the decomposition is of bounded variation, representing the underlying image structure, while the second function captures the texture and possible noise. The region of missing information in the bounded variation image is reconstructed using image inpainting algorithms, while the same region in the texture image is filled-in with texture synthesis techniques. The original image is then reconstructed adding back these two subimages. The novel contribution of this paper is then in the combination of these three previously developed components, image decomposition with in-painting and texture synthesis, which permits the simultaneous use of filling-in algorithms that are suited for different image characteristics. The novelty in the approach is to perform filling-in in a domain different from the original given image space. Examples on real images show the advantages of this proposed approach.