Adaptive document segmentation and geometric relation labeling: algorithms and experimental results

This paper describes a generic document segmentation and geometric relation labeling method with applications to document analysis. Unlike the previous document segmentation methods where text spacing, border lines, and/or a priori layout models based template processing are performed, the present method begins with a hierarchy of partitioned image layers where inhomogeneous higher-level regions are recursively positioned into lower-level rectangular subregions and at the same time lower-level smaller homogeneous regions are merged into larger homogeneous regions. The present method differs from the traditional split-and-merge segmentation method in that it orthogonally splits regions using thresholds adaptively computed from projection profiles.