US Patent 7916971 Image processing method and apparatus

An image processing technique includes acquiring a main image of a scene and determining one or more facial regions in the main image. The facial regions are analysed to determine if any of the facial regions includes a defect. A sequence of relatively low resolution images nominally of the same scene is also acquired. One or more sets of low resolution facial regions in the sequence of low resolution images are determined and analysed for defects. Defect free facial regions of a set are combined to provide a high quality defect free facial region. At least a portion of any defective facial regions of the main image are corrected with image information from a corresponding high quality defect free facial region.