Removal of streaking artefact in the images of the Pierre Auger Observatory infra-red cameras

In this paper the problem of removing concentric semi-circular stripe artefacts induced by the operating hardware of the infra red cameras of the Pierre Auger Observatory, is tackled. The method builds on top of a recent algorithm for the removal of artefacts, which presents a robust filter, obtained as a combination of Wavelet and Fourier analysis, capable of eliminating horizontal and vertical stripes in images, while trying to preserve structural features and quantitative values of the image. The method requires several parameters which have been tuned by an exhaustive test on a large set of images. The results show that the method is capable to satisfactorily remove the stripe artefacts.