Specular highlight region restoration using image clustering and inpainting

A novel specular highlight restoration algorithm has been proposed to remove the specular highlight in a real-time vision system. In this paper, the specular highlight region has been detected and it has been restored by image inpainting method. Most of specular highlight detection algorithms are effective only for a single image. And the auto-threshold algorithm has been implemented in real time, but, it has still low reliability with a heavy computational cost. The proposed system detects pixels corresponding to the specular highlight region in the HSI color space through a newly defined classification table. So, Specular highlight can be detected quickly with these simplified classification table. In addition, it has versatility because it can be combined with various existing high-performance image inpainting method. The superiority of the proposed algorithm is compared with the conventional specular highlight removal algorithm by combining proposed algorithm with two high-performance image inpainting techniques.