Specular reflection removal using local structural similarity and chromaticity consistency

This paper presents a technique that removes specular reflection in an image without sacrificing texture and chromaticity fidelity in diffuse regions of the image. This method is based on the observation that there exist structural similarity both in diffuse and specular components with original highlight image as well as strong local correlation in chromaticity in diffuse component. Local correlation in chromaticity regularizes chromaticity consistency. Structural similarity is measured using a gradient magnitude similarity map of a diffuse region. A diffuse component is estimated by solving local structure and chromaticity joint compensation problem. Experiment results show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art specular reflection removal methods in terms of visual evaluation and the degree of information loss.