Patent ID: 7366357

Claim:
A method for processing an image comprising: identifying pixels in the image which are less critical; substituting data into identified pixels, the data being chosen to provide a desired characteristic for processing the image; generating a hole-image by setting to zero pixel values of pixels identified to be less critical to the image; sub-sampling the hole-image, by averaging only non-zero pixel values in pixel neighborhoods to obtain sub-sampled pixel values for the sub-sampled hole-image, wherein each of the sub sampled pixel values has a non-zero value if a corresponding neighborhood has at least one non-zero pixel value, or a zero value if the corresponding neighborhood has all zero pixel values; averaging the non-zero sub-sampled pixel values of the sub-sampled hole-image to obtain an avenge value; and setting the sub-sampled pixel values of zero to the average value of the non-zero sub-sampled pixel values.