1. A method of automatically correcting dust artifact within images acquired by a system including a digital camera, comprising: (a) determining probability of dust artifact regions corresponding to pixels within a digitally-acquired image based at least in part on a pixel analysis of the region in view of predetermined characteristics indicative of the presence of a dust artifact region; (b) associating the dust artifact regions with one or more extracted parameters relating to the optical system when the image was acquired; (c) forming a statistical dust map including mapped dust regions based on the dust artifact determining and associating operations; and (d) correcting digital data corresponding to correlated dust artifact regions within said digitally-acquired image based on the associated statistical dust map.