Patent ID: 7424170

Claim:
A method of automatically correcting dust artifact within images acquired by a system including a digital camera, comprising: (a) determining probability of dust artifact regions corresponding to pixels within a digitally-acquired image based at least in part on a pixel analysis of the region in view of predetermined characteristics indicative of the presence of a dust artifact region; (b) associating the dust artifact regions with one or more extracted parameters relating to the optical system when the image was acquired; (c) forming a statistical dust map including mapped dust regions based on the dust artifact determining and associating operations; and (d) correcting digital data corresponding to correlated dust artifact regions within said digitally-acquired image based on the associated statistical dust map, and (e) wherein the dust artifact determining includes: (I) loading the statistical dust map; (II) loading extracted parameter information of a present image; (III) performing a calculation for relating the statistical dust may with the present image according to a selected value of at least one extracted parameter; and (IV) comparing dust artifact detection data with the statistical dust map data.