Image processing/restoration in Matlab

Question

I have several images that i would like to correct from artifacts. They show different animals but they appear to look like they were folded (look at the image attached). The folds are straight and they go through the wings as well, they are just hard to see but they are there. I would like to remove the folds but at the same time preserve the information from the picture (structure and color of the wings). I am using MATLAB right now and i have tried several methods but nothing seems to work.

Initially i tried to see if i can see anything by using an FFT but i do not see a structure in the spectrum that i can remove. I tried to use several edge detection methods (like Sobel, etc) but the problem is that the edge detection always finds the edges of the wings (because they are stronger) rather than the straight lines. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to proceed with this problem? I am not attaching any code because none of the methods i have tried (and described) are working.

Thank you for the help in advance.

Answer 1

I'll leave this bit here for anyone that knows how to erase those lines without affecting the quality of the image:

a = imread('https://i.stack.imgur.com/WpFAA.jpg');
b = abs(diff(a,1,2));
b = max(b,[],3);
c = imerode(b,strel('rectangle',[200,1]));