Shape based local thresholding for binarization of document images

This paper presents a novel local threshold algorithm for the binarization of document images. Stroke width of handwritten and printed characters in documents is utilized as the shape feature. As a result, in addition to the intensity analysis, the proposed algorithm introduces the stroke width as shape information into local thresholding. Experimental results for both synthetic and practical document images show that the proposed local threshold algorithm is superior in terms of segmentation quality to the threshold approaches that solely use intensity information.     

A multi-scale framework for adaptive binarization of degraded document images

In this work, a multi-scale binarization framework is introduced, which can be used along with any adaptive threshold-based binarization method. This framework is able to improve the binarization results and to restore weak connections and strokes, especially in the case of degraded historical documents. This is achieved thanks to localized nature of the framework on the spatial domain. The framework requires several binarizations on different scales, which is addressed by introduction of fast grid-based models. This enables us to explore high scales which are usually unreachable to the traditional approaches. In order to expand our set of adaptive methods, an adaptive modification of Otsu's method, called AdOtsu, is introduced. In addition, in order to restore document images suffering from bleed-through degradation, we combine the framework with recursive adaptive methods. The framework shows promising performance in subjective and objective evaluations performed on available datasets.     

A binarization method with learning-built rules for document images produced by cameras

In this paper, we propose a novel binarization method for document images produced by cameras. Such images often have varying degrees of brightness and require more careful treatment than merely applying a statistical method to obtain a threshold value. To resolve the problem, the proposed method divides an image into several regions and decides how to binarize each region. The decision rules are derived from a learning process that takes training images as input. Tests on images produced under normal and inadequate illumination conditions show that our method yields better visual quality and better OCR performance than three global binarization methods and four locally adaptive binarization methods.     

Adaptive thresholding algorithm: Efficient computation technique based on intelligent block detection for degraded document images

Document image binarization involves converting gray level images into binary images, which is a feature that has significantly impacted many portable devices in recent years, including PDAs and mobile camera phones. Given the limited memory space and the computational power of portable devices, reducing the computational complexity of an embedded system is of priority concern. This work presents an efficient document image binarization algorithm with low computational complexity and high performance. Integrating the advantages of global and local methods allows the proposed algorithm to divide the document image into several regions. A threshold surface is then constructed based on the diversity and the intensity of each region to derive the binary image. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in providing a promising binarization outcome and low computational cost.     

A noise attribute thresholding method for document image binarization

A new thresholding method, called the noise attribute thresholding method (NAT), for document image binarization is presented in this paper. This method utilizes the noise attribute features extracted from the images to make the selection of threshold values for image thresholding. These features are based on the properties of noise in the images and are independent of the strength of the signals (objects and background) in the image. A simple noise model is given to explain these noise properties. The NAT method has been applied to the problem of removing text and figures printed on the back of the paper. Conventional global thresholding methods cannot solve this kind of problem satisfactorily. Experimental results show that the NAT method is very effective. Received July 05, 1999 / Revised July 07, 2000     

Connectivity-based local adaptive thresholding for carotid artery segmentation using MRA images

The computer algorithms for the delineation of anatomical structures and other regions of interest on the medical imagery are important component in assisting and automating specific radiological tasks. In addition, the segmentation of region is an important first step for variety image related application and visualization tasks. In this paper, we propose a fast and automated connectivity-based local adaptive thresholding (CLAT) algorithm to segment the carotid artery in sequence medical imagery. This algorithm provides the new feature that is the circumscribed quadrangle on the segmented carotid artery for region-of-interest (ROI) determination. By using the preserved connectivity between consecutive slice images, the size of the ROI is adjusted like a moving window according to the segmentation result of previous slice image. The histogram is prepared for each ROI and then smoothed by local averaging for the threshold selection. The threshold value for carotid artery segmentation is locally selected on each slice image and is adaptively determined through the sequence image. In terms of automated features and computing time, this algorithm is more effective than region growing and deformable model approaches. This algorithm is also applicable to segment the cylinder shape structures and tree-like blood vessels such as renal artery and coronary artery in the medical imagery. Experiments have been conducted on synthesized images, phantom and clinical data sets with various Gaussian noise.     

An improved binarization algorithm based on a water flow model for document image with inhomogeneous backgrounds

A segmentation algorithm using a water flow model [Kim et al., Pattern Recognition 35 (2002) 265–277] has already been presented where a document image can be efficiently divided into two regions, characters and background, due to the property of locally adaptive thresholding. However, this method has not decided when to stop the iterative process and required long processing time. Plus, characters on poor contrast backgrounds often fail to be separated successfully. Accordingly, to overcome the above drawbacks to the existing method, the current paper presents an improved approach that includes extraction of regions of interest (ROIs), an automatic stopping criterion, and hierarchical thresholding. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve a satisfactory binarization quality, especially for document images with a poor contrast background, and is significantly faster than the existing method.     

Document image binarization based on topographic analysis using a water flow model

This paper proposes a local adaptive thresholding method based on a water flow model, in which an image surface is considered as a three-dimensional (3-D) terrain. To extract characters from backgrounds, we pour water onto the terrain surface. Water flows down to the lower regions of the terrain and fills valleys. Then, the thresholding process is applied to the amount of filled water for character extraction, in which the proposed thresholding method is applied to gray level document images consisting of characters and backgrounds. The proposed method based on a water flow model shows the property of locally adaptive thresholding. Computer simulation with synthetic and real document images shows that the proposed method yields effective adaptive thresholding results for binarization of document images.     

Adaptive image-smoothing using a coplanar matrix and its application to document image binarization

Abstract. For document images corrupted by various kinds of noise, direct binarization images may be severely blurred and degraded. A common treatment for this problem is to pre-smooth input images using noise-suppressing filters. This article proposes an image-smoothing method used for prefiltering the document image binarization. Conceptually, we propose that the influence range of each pixel affecting its neighbors should depend on local image statistics. Technically, we suggest using coplanar matrices to capture the structural and textural distribution of similar pixels at each site. This property adapts the smoothing process to the contrast, orientation, and spatial size of local image structures. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which compares favorably with existing methods in reducing noise and preserving image features. In addition, due to the adaptive nature of the similar pixel definition, the proposed filter output is more robust regarding different noise levels than existing methods. Received: October 31, 2001 / October 09, 2002 Correspondence to:L. Fan (e-mail: fanlixin@ieee.org)     

Adaptive binarization method for degraded document images based on surface contrast variation

Document binarization is an important technique in document image analysis and recognition. Generally, binarization methods are ineffective for degraded images. Several binarization methods have been proposed; however, none of them are effective for historical and degraded document images. In this paper, a new binarization method is proposed for degraded document images. The proposed method based on the variance between pixel contrast, it consists of four stages: pre-processing, geometrical feature extraction, feature selection, and post-processing. The proposed method was evaluated based on several visual and statistical experiments. The experiments were conducted using five International Document Image Binarization Contest benchmark datasets specialized for binarization testing. The results compared with five adaptive binarization methods: Niblack, Sauvola thresholding, Sauvola compound algorithm, NICK, and Bataineh. The results show that the proposed method performs better than other methods in all binarization cases.     

A multi-plane approach for text segmentation of complex document images

This study presents a new method, namely the multi-plane segmentation approach, for segmenting and extracting textual objects from various real-life complex document images. The proposed multi-plane segmentation approach first decomposes the document image into distinct object planes to extract and separate homogeneous objects including textual regions of interest, non-text objects such as graphics and pictures, and background textures. This process consists of two stages—localized histogram multilevel thresholding and multi-plane region matching and assembling. Then a text extraction procedure is applied on the resultant planes to detect and extract textual objects with different characteristics in the respective planes. The proposed approach processes document images regionally and adaptively according to their respective local features. Hence detailed characteristics of the extracted textual objects, particularly small characters with thin strokes, as well as gradational illuminations of characters, can be well-preserved. Moreover, this way also allows background objects with uneven, gradational, and sharp variations in contrast, illumination, and texture to be handled easily and well. Experimental results on real-life complex document images demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective in extracting textual objects with various illuminations, sizes, and font styles from various types of complex document images.     

AdOtsu: An adaptive and parameterless generalization of Otsu's method for document image binarization

Adaptive binarization methods play a central role in document image processing. In this work, an adaptive and parameterless generalization of Otsu's method is presented. The adaptiveness is obtained by combining grid-based modeling and the estimated background map. The parameterless behavior is achieved by automatically estimating the document parameters, such as the average stroke width and the average line height. The proposed method is extended using a multiscale framework, and has been applied on various datasets, including the DIBCO'09 dataset, with promising results.     

A knowledge-based system for extracting text-lines from mixed and overlapping text/graphics compound document images

This paper presents a new knowledge-based system for extracting and identifying text-lines from various real-life mixed text/graphics compound document images. The proposed system first decomposes the document image into distinct object planes to separate homogeneous objects, including textual regions of interest, non-text objects such as graphics and pictures, and background textures. A knowledge-based text extraction and identification method obtains the text-lines with different characteristics in each plane. The proposed system offers high flexibility and expandability by merely updating new rules to cope with various types of real-life complex document images. Experimental and comparative results prove the effectiveness of the proposed knowledge-based system and its advantages in extracting text-lines with a large variety of illumination levels, sizes, and font styles from various types of mixed and overlapping text/graphics complex compound document images.     

基于连通域的扭曲中文文本图像快速校正方法

针对扭曲中文文本图像文字识别率不理想这一问题,提出一种基于连通域的文本图像快速扭曲校正方法。根据汉字结构特征合并连通域,实现切分文字;利用就近聚合文字的方法定位文本行,按行垂直校正每个文字位置,获得被校正的图像。实验结果表明,该方法校正速度快,对严重扭曲的中文文本图像能取得较好的校正效果,校正后图像的OCR识别率明显提高。     

Transition pixel: A concept for binarization based on edge detection and gray-intensity histograms

This paper introduces a novel binarization method based on the concept of transition pixel, a generalization of edge pixels. Such pixels are characterized by extreme transition values computed using pixel-intensity differences in a small neighborhood. We show how to adjust the threshold of several binary threshold methods which compute gray-intensity thresholds, using the gray-intensity mean and variance of the pixels in the transition set. Our experiments show that the new approach yields segmentation performance superior to several with current state-of-the-art binarization algorithms.     

Color image segmentation based on homogram thresholding and region merging

In this paper, a color image segmentation approach based on homogram thresholding and region merging is presented. The homogram considers both the occurrence of the gray levels and the neighboring homogeneity value among pixels. Therefore, it employs both the local and global information. Fuzzy entropy is utilized as a tool to perform homogram analysis for finding all major homogeneous regions at the first stage. Then region merging process is carried out based on color similarity among these regions to avoid oversegmentation. The proposed homogram-based approach (HOB) is compared with the histogram-based approach (HIB). The experimental results demonstrate that the HOB can find homogeneous regions more effectively than HIB does, and can solve the problem of discriminating shading in color images to some extent.