A method of automatically correcting dust artifact regions within images acquired by a system including a digital camera includes digitally-acquiring one or more original images with the digital camera. Probabilities that certain pixels correspond to dust artifact regions within the one or more digitally-acquired images are determined. The dust artifact regions are associated with one or more extracted parameters relating to the optical system when the one or more images were acquired. A statistical dust map is formed including mapped dust regions based on the dust artifact probability determining and associating operations. Pixels corresponding to dust artifact regions within the one or more original images are corrected based on the associated statistical dust map.