Digital picture restoration and enhancement for quality archiving

Digital restoration is a process in which an existing hard copy photograph is converted into a digital image. After an image stack has been acquired it may be preprocessed to improve image quality prior to 3-D reconstruction. The preprocessing usually involves application of image filters (mathematical algorithms implemented in software) to the entire data set to remove noise and artifacts, smooth or sharpen the images, or to correct for problems with contrast and/or brightness. Median and Gaussian filters have the general affect of smoothing images. These are used to eliminate noise and background artifacts and to smooth sharp edges, but also tend to remove some of the detail in small objects.