Let´s be done with thresholds!

Current security applications rely on the performances of the algorithms that they use. For document authentication, document analysis algorithms should be precise enough to detect any modification. They should also be stable enough so that a document and its photocopy yield the same result. This requirement is an absolute stability. Having close values is not enough. They need to be exactly the same. This paper presents our preliminary work on the case of a stable layout descriptor. While everyone knows that thresholds are a source of instability, they are still common practice. We describe a promising layout descriptor which drastically reduces the number of thresholds compared to the state of the art. Unfortunately, it is not stable enough when tested on real data. There are still too many thresholds. This paper opens and justifies the path towards algorithms without any threshold.