An improved Richardson–Lucy algorithm based on local prior

Abstract

Ringing is one of the most common disturbing artifacts in image deconvolution. With a totally known kernel, the standard Richardson–Lucy (RL) algorithm succeeds in many motion deblurring processes, but the resulting images still contain visible ringing. When the estimated kernel is different from the real one, the result of the standard RL iterative algorithm will be worse. To suppress the ringing artifacts caused by failures in the blur kernel estimation, this paper improves the RL algorithm based on the local prior. Firstly, the standard deviation of pixels in the local window is computed to find the smooth region and the image gradient in the region is constrained to make its distribution consistent with the deblurring image gradient. Secondly, in order to suppress the ringing near the edge of a rigid body in the image, a new mask was obtained by computing the sharp edge of the image produced using the first step. If the kernel is large-scale, where the foreground is rigid and the background is smoothing, this step could produce a significant inhibitory effect on ringing artifacts. Thirdly, the boundary constraint is strengthened if the boundary is relatively smooth. As a result of the steps above, high-quality deblurred images can be obtained even when the estimated kernels are not perfectly accurate. On the basis of blurred images and the related kernel information taken by the additional hardware, our approach proved to be effective.