Document Image Analysis and Recognition
Raghaven Manmatha · Wiley Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering · 2009
Abstract Paper archives need to be converted to electronic form to enable the search and organization of documents. This article provides a brief introduction to the basic ideas and the remaining challenges. Essentially, this involves first scanning the image, then discovering the page layout to separate text segments and finally recognizing characters and words. The basics of scanning, image preprocessing steps, page segmentation and recognition are described for printed documents followed by a brief discussion of large vocabulary handwriting recognition. Other issues discussed include the detection of text against image backgrounds, language identification and datasets and evaluation. Modern good quality documents with printed fonts can be well recognized but poorer quality print recognition as well as handwriting recognition still remain major research challenges.