What Would You Do? Digital ICE with Kodachrome

My Coolscan film/slide scanner has Digital ICE, which can reduce dust and scratches from scanned materials. ICE does not work well with most Kodachrome slides, though, and Grandpa loved to use Kodachrome.

Using ICE with Kodachrome involves tradeoffs and a requires a judgment call. Here is one example of the tradeoffs from a picture of Grandma's graduation.

Scanned as a Kodachrome with no Digital ICE:

Scanned as a Kodachrome with Digital ICE:

Scanned as a non-Kodachrome slide with Digital ICE:

In the first picture, there are obvious defects caused by dust, dirt, and scratches.

In the second picture, the ICE has removed some of the defects, but many are still obvious. However, a new defect has been introduced, a blurring of detail, especially where different colors meet. This blurring is most noticeable (to me, at least) at the bottom of Grandma's collar.

In the third picture, the ICE has removed most defects, but the blurring is even more pronounced and is visible along a number of edges in the image.

Which would you do? Which picture would you keep -- the one with the fewest blurred details, the one with the fewest defects, or somewhere in between?

I opted for the second picture. The way I see it, the defects are now part of the source material, and I would rather not introduce more defects during the archiving process. The second picture removes original defects without really introducing new ones, a tradeoff I am willing to make. If need be, I can use Photoshop Elements to remove additional defects in a copy of the image.

BTW, congratulations on your graduation, Grandma!