A Novel Skew Detection Technique Based on Vertical Projections

Document skew detection is often done by the use of horizontal projections. In this paper, we introduce a new document skew detection approach that is based on vertical projections as well as bounding box minimization criterion. We motivated by the fact that the majority of the Latin characters have vertical strokes. We claim that the proposed approach is more efficient and gives more accurate results compared with the state-of-the-art skew detection algorithm based on horizontal projections since it is noise and warp resistant. For these reasons, it can be efficiently applied to historical machine printed documents. Experimental results on a database with representative historical printed documents prove the efficiency of the proposed approach. Moreover, an analysis of the performance of the main elements of the proposed technique is also done.