Diffusion-Shock Inpainting

Abstract

We propose diffusion-shock (DS) inpainting as a hitherto unexplored integrodifferential equation for filling in missing structures in images. It combines two carefully chosen components that have proven their usefulness in different applications: homogeneous diffusion inpainting and coherence-enhancing shock filtering. DS inpainting enjoys the complementary synergy of its building blocks: It offers a high degree of anisotropy along an eigendirection of the structure tensor. This enables it to connect interrupted structures over large distances. Moreover, it benefits from the sharp edge structure generated by the shock filter, and it exploits the efficient filling-in effect of homogeneous diffusion. The second order equation that underlies DS inpainting inherits a continuous maximum-minimum principle from its constituents. In contrast to other attractive second order inpainting equations such as edge-enhancing anisotropic diffusion, we can guarantee this property also for the proposed discrete algorithm. Our experiments show a performance that is comparable to or better than many linear or nonlinear, isotropic or anisotropic processes of second or fourth order. They include homogeneous diffusion, biharmonic interpolation, TV inpainting, edge-enhancing anisotropic diffusion, the methods of Tschumperl\'e and of Bornemann and M\"arz, Cahn-Hilliard inpainting, and Euler's elastica.