1. A portable digital image acquisition device including a lens assembly, an image sensor, a processor, and a processor-readable medium having code embedded therein for programming the processor to perform a method of automatically correcting dust artifact within images acquired by the device, wherein the method comprises: (a) acquiring one or more original digital images with said digital acquisition device; (b) determining probabilities that certain pixels correspond to dust artifact regions within said one or more images; (c) associating probable dust artifact regions with one or more values of one or more extracted parameters relating to the lens assembly of the digital acquisition device when the one or more images were acquired; (d) eliminating certain suspected dust artifact regions as having a probability below a first threshold value; (e) forming a statistical dust map including mapped dust regions based on the determining, associating and eliminating; and (f) correcting pixels corresponding to correlated dust artifact regions within same or different images, or both, based on the associated statistical dust map.