Fast removal of line scratches in old movies

In this paper a fast algorithm for removing line scratches in old movies is presented. It is strongly based on exploiting the defect visibility in the image. To this aim the Weber´s law can be applied to coefficients of an over-complete wavelet representation of the degraded image. The intensity of the defect, which is represented as a light diffraction effect, is then attenuated in the vertical and approximation sub-bands till the minimum threshold of visibility is reached. The experimental results are very satisfying: the image is completely recovered without local artifacts or annoying smoothing effects.