Method for reducing newton's rings pattern in the scanned image reproduced with film scanners

Newton's rings pattern always blurs the scanned image when scanning a film using a film scanner. Such phenomenon is a kind of equal thickness interference, which is caused by the air layer between the film and the glass of the scanner. A lot of methods were proposed to prevent the interference, such as film holder, anti-Newton's rings glass and emulsion direct imaging technology, etc. Those methods are expensive and lack of flexibility. In this paper, Newton's rings pattern is proved to be a 2-D chirp signal. Then, the fractional Fourier transform, which can be understood as the chirp-based decomposition, is introduced to process Newton's rings pattern. A digital filtering method in the fractional Fourier domain is proposed to reduce the Newton's rings pattern. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation. Compared with the traditional optical method, the proposed method is more flexible and low cost.