An efficient thresholding algorithm for degraded document images based on intelligent block detection

Document image binarization plays an important role in many applications such as optical character recognition, automatic bank check processing, and vehicle license recognition. This paper proposes an efficient binarization algorithm with intelligent block size detection. Based on the image characteristic, the document image is automatically divided into several blocks with various sizes. Then, a threshold surface is constructed to derive the binary image. Experimental results show that the proposed method not only provide promising binarization result, but also low computational cost.