An Anthropocentric Approach to Text Extraction from WWW Images

A. Antonacopoulos, D. Karatzas

Proceedings of the 4th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS2000), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, December 2000, pp. 515-525

Abstract

There is a significant need to analyse the text in images on WWW pages, both for effective indexing and for presentation by non-visual means (e.g., audio). This paper argues that the extraction of text from such images benefits from an anthropocentric approach in the distinction between colour regions. The novelty of the idea is the use of a human perspective of colour perception in preference to RGB colour space analysis. This enables the extraction of text in complex situations such as in the presence of varying colour and texture (characters and background). More precisely, characters are extracted as distinct regions with separate chromaticity and/or luminance by performing a layer decomposition of the image. The method described here is the first in our systematic approach to approximate the human colour perception characteristics for the identification of character regions. In this instance, the image is decomposed by performing histogram analysis of Hue and Luminance and merging in the HLS colour space.

Citation

A. Antonacopoulos, D. Karatzas , "An Anthropocentric Approach to Text Extraction from WWW Images", Proceedings of the 4th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS2000), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, December 2000, pp. 515-525

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