Theoretical Foundation of the Weighted Laplace Inpainting Problem

Abstract

Laplace interpolation is a popular approach in image inpainting using partial differential equations. The classic approach considers the Laplace equation with mixed boundary conditions. Recently a more general formulation has been proposed where the differential operator consists of a point-wise convex combination of the Laplacian and the known image data. We provide the first detailed analysis on existence and uniqueness of solutions for the arising mixed boundary value problem. Our approach considers the corresponding weak formulation and aims at using the Theorem of Lax-Milgram to assert the existence of a solution. To this end we have to resort to weighted Sobolev spaces. Our analysis shows that solutions do not exist unconditionally. The weights need some regularity and fulfil certain growth conditions. The results from this work complement findings which were previously only available for a discrete setup.