Enhanced Correction Methods for High Density Hot Pixel Defects in Digital Imagers

Our previous research has found that the main defects in digital cameras are "Hot Pixels" which increase at a nearly constant temporal rate. Defect rates have been shown to grow as a power law of the pixel size and ISO, potentially causing hundreds to thousands of defects per year in cameras with <2 micron pixels, thus making image correction crucial. This paper discusses a novel correction method that uses a weighted combination of two terms - traditional interpolation and hot pixel parameters correction. The weights are based on defect severity, ISO, exposure time and complexity of the image. For the hot pixel parameters component, we have studied the behavior of hot pixels under illumination and have created a new correction model that takes this behavior into account. We show that for an image with a slowly changing background, the classic interpolation performs well. However, for more complex scenes, the correction improves when a weighted combination of both components is used. To test our algorithm's accuracy, we devised a novel laboratory experimental method for extracting the true value of the pixel that currently experiences a hot pixel defect. This method involves a simple translation of the imager based on the pixel size and other optical distances.