Fast local image inpainting based on the Allen–Cahn model

• We present a fast and efficient algorithm for image inpainting.
• The proposed model is based on the local Allen–Cahn equation.
• The proposed scheme is unconditionally stable with respect to time step size.

In this paper, we propose a fast local image inpainting algorithm based on the Allen–Cahn model. The proposed algorithm is applied only on the inpainting domain and has two features. The first feature is that the pixel values in the inpainting domain are obtained by curvature-driven diffusions and utilizing the image information from the outside of the inpainting region. The second feature is that the pixel values outside of the inpainting region are the same as those in the original input image since we do not compute the outside of the inpainting region. Thus the proposed method is computationally efficient. We split the governing equation into one linear equation and one nonlinear equation by using an operator splitting technique. The linear equation is discretized by using a fully implicit scheme and the nonlinear equation is solved analytically. We prove the unconditional stability of the proposed scheme. To demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed method, various numerical results on real and synthetic images are presented.