Abstract. We present a novel deinterlacing scheme that makes consequent use of discontinuity-preserving partial differential equations (PDEs). It combines the accuracy of recent variational motion estimation techniques with the directional interpolation qualities of anisotropic diffusion filters. Our algorithm proceeds in three steps: First, we interpolate the interlaced images by means of a spatial edge enhancing diffusion process (EED). Then we apply the variational optic flow technique of Brox et al. (2004) in order to obtain a precise interframe registration. Finally we use a spatiotemporal generalisation of EED for motion-compensated inpainting of the missing data in the original sequence. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms not only classical deinterlacing schemes, but also a recent PDE-based approach.