Handling Outliers by Robust M-Estimation in Blind Image Deblurring

The major task of traditional motion deblurring methods is to estimate the blur kernel and restore the latent image. In low-light conditions, the pointolite is likely to produce saturated light streaks in captured blurred images. The light streaks are usually double-edged swords—outliers to the deconvolution, but a cue to kernel estimation. In this paper, we propose a novel blind motion deblurring method for blurred images including light streaks. The main idea is to model the non-linear blur caused by outliers as the Huber's M-estimation in blind deconvolution and take the shape of the light streak as a cue to estimate the blur kernel. Specifically, the optimal light streak patch is selected automatically according to the characteristics of light streaks and the blur kernel. This simple yet effective selection strategy solves the problems of false detection of candidate light streaks and optimal light streak in existing methods. Then, the optimal light streak patch is parameterized as a prior and is combined with other regularizers to estimate the blur kernel. Compared with the state-of-the-art kernel estimation methods, the proposed algorithm reduces the influence of outliers on deconvolution and utilizes more information. Thus, the restored image is more accurate. Experimental results on both synthetic and real images demonstrate the high accuracy of our algorithm.