A method for combining complementary techniques for document image segmentation

Image segmentation is a major task of handwritten document image processing. Many of the proposed techniques for image segmentation are complementary in the sense that each of them using a different approach can solve different difficult problems such as overlapping, touching components, influence of author or font style etc. In this paper, a combination method of different segmentation techniques is presented. Our goal is to exploit the segmentation results of complementary techniques and specific features of the initial image so as to generate improved segmentation results. Experimental results on line segmentation methods for handwritten documents demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed combination method.     

Generalization of Frei and Chen's approach to extract the lines and edges of a digital image

This work proposes the generalization to any k dimension of the approach suggested by Frei and Chen for line and edge detection in a digital image with square masks. With the proposed algorithm we can obtain information about the image lines and edges without modifying the rest of the image. To test these results we have applied the algorithm to biomedical images and geophysical images of archaeological prospections achieving optimal results.     

On sorting triangles in a delaunay tessellation

In a two-dimensional Delaunay-triangulated domain, there exists a partial ordering of the triangles (with respect to a vertex) that is consistent with the two-dimensional visibility of the triangles from that vertex. An equivalent statement is that a polygon that is star-shaped with respect to a given vertex can be extended, one triangle at a time, until it includes the entire domain. Arbitrary planar triangulations do not possess this useful property which allows incremental processing of the triangles.This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation's US-Italy Collaborative Research Program under Grant INT-8714578 and Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Research Grant IRI-8704781.     

一种基于映射法的散乱点云Delaunay三角剖分算法

针对直接在三维空间构建海量点云的Delaunay三角网格效率低下,提出一种新的基于映射法的Delau-nay三角网格构建算法.首先提出一种基于区域增长法的点云分片方法,能够保证对分片后的点云数据进行映射而不产生重叠;然后保持空间点云之间的距离特性,将三维点云映射到二维平面;在二维平面内进行Delaunay三角剖分,再将结果返回到三维空间内.实验结果表明,算法能够构建质量较好的三角网格.由于该算法将点云的三角剖分转换到低维空间,通过实验结果对比本算法与其他算法效果,证明该方法能够更快地完成重构.     

复杂版面的文本图像图文分割算法

为了满足办公自动化的实时性要求,本文提出了一种改进的自顶向下的图文分割算法。该方法利用文本行基线之间的距离自适应的确定结构元素的大小,克服自顶向下算法要求对页面有先验知识的缺点。实验表明,本文提出的算法分割准确,速度快。     

基于Delaunay三角剖分的印鉴识别算法

针对印鉴图像姿势纠正及印鉴匹配处理,引入计算几何中平面点集的三角剖分方法--Delaunay三角剖分方法和基于此的多边形三角剖分方法,并提出一种基于DT网格的印鉴识别方法.通过对两种细节点(基于线条的细节点和基于多边形的细节点)的拓扑结构进行DT三角划分,把空间上位置相近的细节点按照一定的规则相连,得到DT三角形网格,并基于该网格寻找若干参考点对,根据获得的参考点对将两幅印鉴图像进行姿势调整,使用获得的参考点对实现基于点模式的印鉴匹配.经分析该方法可以获得较多的参考点,确保了印鉴旋转、印鉴平移参数计算结果的准确性,有效地提高了最终的识别效果.     

Two algorithms for constructing a Delaunay triangulation

This paper provides a unified discussion of the Delaunay triangulation. Its geometric properties are reviewed and several applications are discussed. Two algorithms are presented for constructing the triangulation over a planar set ofN points. The first algorithm uses a divide-and-conquer approach. It runs inO(N logN) time, which is asymptotically optimal. The second algorithm is iterative and requiresO(N ²) time in the worst case. However, its average case performance is comparable to that of the first algorithm.This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant MCS-76-17321 and the Joint Services Electronics Program under contract DAAB-07-72-0259.     

Table form document analysis based on the document structure grammar

Structure analysis of table form documents is an important issue because a printed document and even an electronic document do not provide logical structural information but merely geometrical layout and lexical information. To handle these documents automatically, logical structure information is necessary. In this paper, we first analyze the elements of the form documents from a communication point of view and retrieve the grammatical elements that appear in them. Then, we present a document structure grammar which governs the logical structure of the form documents. Finally, we propose a structure analysis system of the table form documents based on the grammar. By using grammar notation, we can easily modify and keep it consistent, as the rules are relatively simple. Another advantage of using grammar notation is that it can be used for generating documents only from logical structure. In our system, documents are assumed to be composed of a set of boxes and they are classified as seven box types. Then the box relations between the indication box and its associated entry box are analyzed based on the semantic and geometric knowledge defined in the document structure grammar. Experimental results have shown that the system successfully analyzed several kinds of table forms.     

An empirical measure of the performance of a document image segmentation algorithm

Document image segmentation is the first step in document image analysis and understanding. One major problem centres on the performance analysis of the evolving segmentation algorithms. The use of a standard document database maintained at the Universities/Research Laboratories helps to solve the problem of getting authentic data sources and other information, but some methodologies have to be used for performance analysis of the segmentation. We describe a new document model in terms of a bounding box representation of its constituent parts and suggest an empirical measure of performance of a segmentation algorithm based on this new graph-like model of the document. Besides the global error measures, the proposed method also produces segment-wise details of common segmentation problems such as horizontal and vertical split and merge as well as invalid and mismatched regions. Received July 14, 2000 / Revised June 12, 2001[-1mm]     

一种基于Delaunay三角化的笔划分割算法

字符笔划在字符识别等领域中存在广泛的应用。针对字符图形的骨架化及笔划提取,本文提出了一种基于动态约束Delaunay三角剖分的算法。该方法首先通过对字符的轮廓多边形进行三角剖分,生成一系列具有拓扑关系的三角形,再根据三角形的三种类型生成各三角形骨架,并连接为整个字符的骨架。然后定义了骨架的平滑度函数及分支长度阈值,消除了畸变分支,并根据得到的骨架进行笔划分割。实验结果表明,该算法具有快速稳定的特点且鲁棒性较好。     

基于图层分割的文档图像压缩方法

传统的图像压缩技术,大都基于图像空域和色度空间同质性的假定,在文档图像的压缩中并不能取得最好的压缩效果。针对文档图像的特点,提出了一种基于图层分割的文档图像压缩方法。该方法首先利用多尺度的2色聚类算法进行文档图像的图层分割,然后根据不同图层的特征,分别采用效果最佳的压缩技术,能够获得比传统的方法更好的压缩效果。     

Text document clustering based on neighbors

Clustering is a very powerful data mining technique for topic discovery from text documents. The partitional clustering algorithms, such as the family of k-means, are reported performing well on document clustering. They treat the clustering problem as an optimization process of grouping documents into k clusters so that a particular criterion function is minimized or maximized. Usually, the cosine function is used to measure the similarity between two documents in the criterion function, but it may not work well when the clusters are not well separated. To solve this problem, we applied the concepts of neighbors and link, introduced in [S. Guha, R. Rastogi, K. Shim, ROCK: a robust clustering algorithm for categorical attributes, Information Systems 25 (5) (2000) 345–366], to document clustering. If two documents are similar enough, they are considered as neighbors of each other. And the link between two documents represents the number of their common neighbors. Instead of just considering the pairwise similarity, the neighbors and link involve the global information into the measurement of the closeness of two documents. In this paper, we propose to use the neighbors and link for the family of k-means algorithms in three aspects: a new method to select initial cluster centroids based on the ranks of candidate documents; a new similarity measure which uses a combination of the cosine and link functions; and a new heuristic function for selecting a cluster to split based on the neighbors of the cluster centroids. Our experimental results on real-life data sets demonstrated that our proposed methods can significantly improve the performance of document clustering in terms of accuracy without increasing the execution time much.     

一种基于Delaunay三角化的笔划分割算法

字符笔划在字符识别等领域中存在广泛的应用。针对字符图形的骨架化及笔划提取，本文提出了一种基于动态约束Delaunay三角割分的算法。该方法首先通过对字符的轮廓多边形进行三角剖分，生成一系列具有拓扑关系的三角形．再根据三角形的三种类型生成各三角形骨架，并连接为整个字符的骨架。然后定义了骨架的平滑度函数及分支长度阈值，消除了畸变分支，并根据得到的骨架进行笔划分割。实验结果表明，该算法具有快速稳定的特点且鲁棒性较好。     

基于Delaunay三角剖分的半径补偿新算法

合理的半径补偿算法能有效提高逆向工程的最终精度.在分析了现有半径补偿算法及其相应优缺点的基础上,针对三角网格法,通过Delaunay三角剖分思想的引入,提出了一种基于Delaunay三角剖分的半径补偿新算法,并对其中三角剖分的优化准则、边界点的处理等关键技术进行了详细的阐述,最后以增压器叶轮为例,实现了叶轮叶面测量数据的半径补偿.     

Text extraction in complex color documents

Text extraction in mixed-type documents is a pre-processing and necessary stage for many document applications. In mixed-type color documents, text, drawings and graphics appear with millions of different colors. In many cases, text regions are overlaid onto drawings or graphics. In this paper, a new method to automatically detect and extract text in mixed-type color documents is presented. The proposed method is based on a combination of an adaptive color reduction (ACR) technique and a page layout analysis (PLA) approach. The ACR technique is used to obtain the optimal number of colors and to convert the document into the principal of them. Then, using the principal colors, the document image is split into the separable color plains. Thus, binary images are obtained, each one corresponding to a principal color. The PLA technique is applied independently to each of the color plains and identifies the text regions. A merging procedure is applied in the final stage to merge the text regions derived from the color plains and to produce the final document. Several experimental and comparative results, exhibiting the performance of the proposed technique, are also presented.     

Handwritten document image segmentation into text lines and words

Two novel approaches to extract text lines and words from handwritten document are presented. The line segmentation algorithm is based on locating the optimal succession of text and gap areas within vertical zones by applying Viterbi algorithm. Then, a text-line separator drawing technique is applied and finally the connected components are assigned to text lines. Word segmentation is based on a gap metric that exploits the objective function of a soft-margin linear SVM that separates successive connected components. The algorithms tested on the benchmarking datasets of ICDAR07 handwriting segmentation contest and outperformed the participating algorithms.     

Triangle refinement in a constrained Delaunay triangulation skeleton

This paper presents an algorithm with the purpose of improving upon the already successful constrained Delaunay triangulation (CDT) skeletonisation technique. Using such a triangulation to construct a skeleton has proven very effective, that can sometimes, however, produce triangles that do not represent the true nature of the underlying shape. The contour pixels chosen for triangulation are of significant importance, as they determine the triangle edges that define the skeleton. The algorithm described in this paper deals with this problem by inserting new triangulation points in strategic locations in end, normal and junction triangles. Results show that the skeletons produced by this algorithm are accurate, robust against noise and, above all, comply much better with a human's perception of the image than the original triangulation method.     

Splitting a Delaunay Triangulation in Linear Time

Abstract. Computing the Delaunay triangulation of n points requires usually a minimum of Ω(n log n) operations, but in some special cases where some additional knowledge is provided, faster algorithms can be designed. Given two sets of points, we prove that, if the Delaunay triangulation of all the points is known, the Delaunay triangulation of each set can be computed in randomized expected linear time.