Text Detection and Recognition in Outdoor Korean Signboards for Mobile System Applications
J.H. Park, Geon-Seok Lee, S.H. Kim, M.H. Lee, Nguyen Dinh Toan · Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea · 2009
Text understand in natural images has become an active research field in the past few decades. In this paper, we present an automatic recognition system in Korean signboards with a complex background. The proposed algorithm includes detection, binarization and extraction of text for the recognition of shop names. First, we utilize an elaborate detection algorithm to detect possible text region based on edge histogram of vertical and horizontal direction. And detected text region is segmented by clustering method. Second, the text is divided into individual characters based on connected components whose center of mass lie below the center line, which are recognized by using a minimum distance classifier. A shape-based statistical feature is adopted, which is adequate for Korean character recognition. The system has been implemented in a mobile phone and is demonstrated to show acceptable performance.