Patent ID: 7769244

Claim:
A method applicable to digital film and video movies for automatic restoration of defects on at least one frame of a succession of f digital frames where f is a positive integer greater than zero, the method being operated by entering the succession of frames as input into a computer, and operating a software computer program to produce an output, the method comprising the steps of: selecting at least one color component from the group consisting of red, green, and blue, and loading the at least one color component as input from the succession of frames to obtain a restored output, calculating a coherency map for each frame of the succession of frames, separating areas of each frame having a smooth texture from regions containing edges via calculation of the coherency map, removing defects appearing on a frame by application of median filtering on texture area(s) defined by the coherency map, correcting each frame of the succession of frames for restoration of smoothed edges pertaining to connected blocks corresponding to the smoothed edges singled out from a difference map by use of the coherency map, and reconstructing each frame of the succession of frames from the at least one restored color component and remaining color components out of the group of three components, whereby all defects are removed and a succession of f frames free of defects is obtained.