Reflection removal in smart devices using a prior assisted independent components analysis

Abstract

When photographs are taken through a glass or any other semi-reflecting transparent surface, in museums, shops, aquariums etc., we encounter undesired reflection. Reflection Removal is an ill-posed problem and is caused by superposition of two layers namely the scene in front of camera and the scene behind the camera getting reflected because of the semi-reflective surface. Modern day hand held Smart Devices (smartphones, tablets, phablets, etc) are typically used for capturing scenes as they are equipped with good camera sensors and processing capabilities and we can expect image quality to be similar to a professional camera. In this direction, we propose a novel method to reduce reflection in images, which is an extension of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) approach, by making use of two cameras present - a back camera (capturing actual scene) and a front facing camera. When compared to the original ICA implementation, our method gives on an average of 10% improvement on the peak signal to noise ratio of the image. © 2015 SPIE-IS&T.