A fast and efficient method for document segmentation for OCR

Author

Kruatrachue, Boontee ; Suthaphan, Phisetphong

Author_Institution

Comput. Eng. Dept., King Mongkut´´s Inst. of Technol., Bangkok, Thailand

Volume

1

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

381

Abstract

This paper describes fast and efficient method for page segmentation of a document containing a nonrectangular block. The presented method is based on a mixed top-down and bottom-up approach to document analysis. The segmentation is based on a column block (paragraph) extracted by a modified edge following algorithm. Instead of a pixel, a window of 32 by 32 pixel is used in the algorithm so that a paragraph can be extracted instead of a character. The document is scanned at 300 dpi and it is possible to extract more than one column into a block. Then, characters in the block are extracted using the edge following algorithm and their boundaries are used to detect multicolumn cases (bottom-up). Since the block extraction only scans through border pixels of paragraphs and characters need to be extracted in the OCR process, this algorithm is faster with fewer overheads than algorithms that need to access all pixels of a document

Keywords

document image processing; edge detection; feature extraction; image segmentation; optical character recognition; OCR; block bounding; block extraction; border pixels; bottom-up approach; document analysis; document segmentation; edge extraction; edge following algorithm; multicolumn cases; nonrectangular block; page segmentation; paragraph extraction; top-down approach; Character recognition; Costs; Data mining; Graphics; Image segmentation; Information technology; Optical character recognition software; Particle separators; Space heating; Text analysis;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

TENCON 2001. Proceedings of IEEE Region 10 International Conference on Electrical and Electronic Technology

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7101-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TENCON.2001.949618

Filename

949618