On foreground-background separation in low quality color document images

This paper proposes an adaptive method for separation of foreground and background in low quality color document images. A connected component labelling is initially implemented to capture the spatially connected similar color pixels. Next, dominant background components are determined to divide the entire image into number of grids each representing local uniformity in illumination, background, etc. Finally foreground parts are located using local information around them. Several color images of old historical documents including manuscripts of high importance are used in the experiment. Apart from a qualitative evaluation, results are quantitatively compared with one popular foreground/background separation technique.