Linear layout processing

Linear layout is a novel concept that exploits the geometric structure of documents or shapes for tasks such as representation and identification. The layout of characteristic features such as lines, blocks of text or dominant points is converted from two-dimensional to one-dimensional space. The features are then quantized and arranged into a linear string representation. The recognition process makes use of the longest common subsequence string to compute the similarity between two documents. The conversion and the string operations make possible a robust system that tolerates noise, deformation and segmentation inconsistencies such as missing and added objects. Encouraging experimental results have been obtained to highlight the potential of the proposed concept and technique