A brief history of digital image restoration.

Presenting a history of the whole scientific field in the few sentences is a challenge, but, in my opinion, if presented in the right way can give a weight to the field in the reader mind.  So let’s try.

The field of image restoration begins primarily with the efforts of the scientist involved in the space program of both the United States and the former Soviet Union in the 1950s and early 1960s. So we can say that the field started from the sky, with the images of the Earth and our solar system. Probably one of the most famous photographs, popular among conspiracy theorists, are ones taken during Apollo 11 mission, the first spaceflight that landed humans on the Moon (1969). 

Armstrong first step on the Moon surface [1]

However, photographs taken on this and similar missions (like Ranger, Lunar Orbiter and Mariner) were subject to many photography degradations, like the presence of the noise and blur. Even many years later, images taken by the astronauts were also blurred due to the inability of the astronaut to study himself in a gravitationless environment while taking the photo. It is easy to imagine that degradation of these images was not a small problem due to enormous expenses required to obtain such pictures at the first place. We can frilly say that huge expenses were one of the first reasons for researchers to start to work on the first algorithms for image restoration.

Looking into the history of the field through the applications we come to the astronomy. In astronomy, one of the main problems are blurred images due to rapidly changing index of reflection in the atmosphere. Here we also have series of the well publicized problems related with Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

The core of spiral galaxy M100, imaged with Hubble before and after corrective optics. [2]

Naturally, at the very beginning image restoration find its place in medical applications firstly used to remove the noise in X-ray and MRI images. I cannot stress enough the importance of the image restoration in medical applications, but I am free to say that historically we certainly save some lives. 

The importance of image restoration in media and movies we can see through several examples. In 1987 film “No way out” with Kevin Costner was based on digital image restoration of the blurry Polaroid negative image. The 1991 movie “JFK” made substantial use of the famous Zapruder 8mm film of the assassination of President Kennedy. Another important role is defiantly restoration of the aged films, but here we stepped into the area of the computer graphics and image enhancement. An important example here is the restoration of the Disney movie “Snow White and the Seventh Dwarfs” (original in 1937) [3].

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937, The Walt Disney Company; photograph from the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York City

Now, if we are talking about movies, we should mention using of the image restoration for the law enforcement and forensic science, since we are witnesses of the huge number of movies and series with this topic. Spoiler alert: please, do not believe everything you see in the shows like Crime Scene Investigation.

References:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope
[3] Banham, M. R., & Katsaggelos, A. K. (1997). Digital image restoration. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 14(2), 24-41. DOI:10.1109/79.581363