Image inpainting-based edge enhancement using the eikonal equation

This paper proposes a novel application of image inpainting techniques for the edge enhancement problems in image deblurring and denoising. The edge enhancement effect is achieved by the jumps of pixel values at edge locations resulted from an inpainting process. The process is formulated by the eikonal partial differential equation (PDE) to rule the inpainting priority of pixels in automatically erased regions. The equation is then numerically solved by the fast marching method. A solution of the Laplace's equation is also embedded in the numerical scheme to assure the smoothness in non-edge locations. Experiments are performed and comparisons are made with other PDE-based enhancement methods to demonstrate the merit of the proposed algorithm.