Restoration of Images Stained with Waterdrops on a Protection Glass Surface by Using a Stereo Image Pair

In this paper, we propose a method for restoration of images stained with waterdrops on a protection glass surface. The method detects positions of waterdrops in images by comparing disparities measured from stereo images with the value calculated from a geometrical relationship of the glass surface and the cameras. Next, it estimates disparities of image regions hidden by waterdrops, based on the property that disparities are generallysimilar with those around waterdrops. Finally, it removes waterdrops from images by replacing the above regions with corresponding image regions obtained by disparityreferring. An experimental result has shown the validity of the proposed method.