Automated statistical self-calibrating detection and removal of blemishes in digital images based on multiple occurrences of dust in images

A method of automatically correcting dust artifact within images acquired by a system including a digital acquisition device including a lens assembly, comprising:

• (a) acquiring multiple original digital images with said digital acquisition device;
• (b) determining probabilities that certain pixels correspond to dust artifact regions within said images based at least in part on a comparison of suspected dust artifact regions within two or more of said images;
• (c) associating probable dust artifact regions with one or more values of one or more extracted parameters relating to the lens assembly of the digital acquisition device when the images were acquired;
• (d) forming a statistical dust map including mapped dust regions based on the dust artifact determining and associating;
• and
• (e) correcting pixels corresponding to correlated dust artifact regions within further digitally-acquired images based on the associated statistical dust map.