A Blind Restoration Approach for Defocused Barcode Images

Use of a mobile camera for barcode decoding provides high portability and availability but it requires that the recorded barcode image must be accurate representation of the barcode that is available on the product. Barcode scanning is challenging because images may be degraded due to out-of-focus blur at the time of image acquisition. Therefore, image restoration is essential in making image sharp and useful. In case of blind restoration of such barcode images accurate estimation of out-of-focus blur parameter is highly desirable. In this article, a robust method has been proposed for estimating the radius of out-of-focus blur. Finite discrete ridgelet transform has been used to find the features of the blurred image and a radial basis function neural network is utilized to estimate the radius of out-of-focus blur. The experimental results reveal that proposed method more robust than the existing methods.