Dynamical morphological processing: a fast method for base line extraction

In most document analysis and recognition systems, straight lines are considered as one of the basic elements that should be located and eliminated to simplify the process of document analysis and recognition. The superposition or the intersection of different objects of interest found in the same area makes the process of detecting and extracting these line segments a non-trivial task to pursue, especially, if the method should preserve the valuable objects of interest that intersect with these lines. In this paper, we present a new and effective approach that detects the existence of line segments and eliminates them with the challenge of preserving the valuable information that intersects these line segments. The new approach makes use of the well-known morphological processing technique of the closing operation, that uses a fixed structuring element, towards the use of a dynamic structuring element. The purpose of the new dynamic structuring element is to detect and preserve the valuable objects intersecting the line segments that should be eliminated regardless of the different orientations with which the objects intersect these line segments