Palm Leaf Manuscript/Color Document image Enhancement by Using Improved Adaptive Binarization Method

This paper presents a new color document image binarization that is suitable for palm leaf manuscripts and color document images. The proposed method consists of two steps: a pre-processing procedure using low-pass Wiener filter, and contrast adaptive binarization for segmentation of text from the background. Firstly, in the pre-processing stage, low-pass Wiener filter is used to eliminate noisy areas, smoothing of background texture as well as contrast enhancement between background and text areas. Finally, binarization is performed by using contrast adaptive binarization method in order to extract useful text information from low quality document images.The techniques are tested on a set of palm leaf manuscript images/color document images. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated on by palm leaf manuscripts/color documents distorted with show-through effects, uneven background color and localized spot.