Adaptive binarization method for document image analysis

This paper proposes an adaptive binarization method, based on the criterion of maximizing local contrast, for document image analysis. The proposed method has overcome, to a large extent, the general problems of poor quality document images, such as non-uniform illumination, undesirable shadows and random noise. It was tested against a variety of challenging images, and the experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.