Identification of motion blur for blind image restoration

Abstract

Successful restoration of blurred images depends primarily on the knowledge we have about the degradation process parameters, i.e., the point spread function (PSF) of the blur and the noise statistics. In many blur types, such as uniform or sinusoidal motions, the most important parameter for proper identification of the PSF is the blur extent parameter. This parameter is the smear size in the blurred image of a point object in the original image. A new method for identification of the blur extent in an image, blurred by horizontal motion of the camera during the exposure time, is presented in this paper. The blur extent identification is accomplished given only the motion-blurred and noisy image. The identification approach here is based on the error characteristics due to the intentional use of inappropriate PSFs in the restoration process. The knowledge of the camera displacement permits high resolution image restoration when this parameter can relate to a specific PSF such as that characterizing linear motion or vibrations. Since the approach is not iterative the computing time is relatively short.