VirtualShave: Automated hair removal from digital dermatoscopic images

VirtualShave is a novel tool to remove hair from digital dermatoscopic images. First, individual hairs are identified using a top-hat filter followed by morphological postprocessing. Then, they are replaced through PDE-based inpainting with an estimate of the underlying occluded skin. VirtualShave's performance is comparable to that of a human operator removing hair manually, and the resulting images are almost indistinguishable from those of hair-free skin.