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Image inverse halftoning and descreening: a review

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Abstract

With the development of computer technology and network technology, a large amount of printed documents are converted to the electronic documents and spread on internet. When a halftone image is scanned to an electronic document, the screen patterns will appear, so the inverse halftoning algorithms are needed to remove the screen patterns and improve image quality. In this paper, the halftoning techniques are introduced firstly, then this paper reviews different inverse halftoning algorithms. The inverse halftoning algorithms introduced in this paper include the low-pass filter algorithm, the fast algorithm, the wavelet based algorithm, the maximum posteriori probability algorithm, the LUT algorithm, the vector based algorithm, and the deconvolution based inverse halftoning algorithm. The image quality evaluation of these inverse halftoning algorithms is also discussed. Finally this paper summarizes the shortcomings of current inverse halftoning algorithms and the directions that can be improved in the future.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Key Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2015BAK01B06), the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61771006, and No. U1504621) and the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (Grant No. 162300410032).

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  1. School of Computer and Information Engineering, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475001, China

    Fan Zhang

  2. School of Software, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475001, China

    Xinhong Zhang

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  1. Fan Zhang
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Correspondence to Xinhong Zhang.

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Zhang, F., Zhang, X. Image inverse halftoning and descreening: a review. Multimed Tools Appl 78, 21021–21039 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-7458-y

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