Patent ID: 8154633

Claim:
A method for automatically finding and repairing lines in image data of a live event, comprising: obtaining an image of the live event from a camera, the live event includes a scene having at least one line segment which includes a portion which is occluded by an object, the object having a width which is greater than a width of the portion; forming a mask image from the image obtained from the camera; automatically detecting the at least one line segment in the mask image; automatically determining that the portion of the at least one line segment is occluded by the object; automatically removing the object; automatically repairing the portion of the at least one line segment which is occluded by the object to provide a repaired portion of the at least one line segment; and depicting at least one virtual viewpoint of the live event which is rotated by an angular offset from a viewpoint of the camera, the at least one virtual viewpoint of the live event uses texture from the image of the live event and includes the repaired portion of the at least one line segment.