Patent ID: 7532767

Claim:
A method of removing ringing artifacts from a decompressed digital image, the decompressed digital image including a background and one or more foreground regions, the method comprising using a computer to perform the steps of: determining a background value of the digital image; computing a threshold value, the threshold comprising a boundary value between background pixels of the digital image and foreground pixels of the digital image; generating a mapping of the digital image, the generating comprising: thresholding the digital image based on the threshold value to produce a thresholded image; and enlarging the foreground regions of the thresholded image to form a map image, the enlarged foreground regions including edge pixels of the foreground region, and the mapping including only the remaining pixels comprising background pixels of the map image, wherein each of the background pixels of the map image corresponds to a background pixel in a background region of the decompressed digital image; cleansing the background region of the decompressed digital image based on the mapping, the cleansing comprising modifying only pixels in the background region corresponding to the background pixels of the map image to reduce variances in the background region, thereby producing a flattened background region; and outputting the image to at least one of a display device and a printer.