Inpainting Techniques and Restoration of Mural Paintings: A Review with Indian Perspective

Abstract

Ancient murals and monuments have been cultural expressions of our ancestor creation throughout civilization from the very beginning of the nature up to present day murals. The world’s cultural heritage had been affected by deterioration, accidental and intentional destruction. This paper aims to summarize various texture based, structurebased and texture-structure basedinpainting techniques by different researchers and their significance for conservation of mural paintings. The techniques are categorized in structure-texture synthesis, exemplar based inpainting, image to image inpainting and synthesis using Deep Learning networks. Category wise significant and partial synthesis results are combined and illustrated at the end of each section. The work also discusses some significant contributions in restoration of murals. The challenges and issues in mural restorations are discussed and the current scenario regarding restoration and reconstruction to Indian mural paintings and monuments is made available concisely.