Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
A New Binarization Algorithm for Historical Documents
Version 1
: Received: 21 November 2017 / Approved: 22 November 2017 / Online: 22 November 2017 (06:38:07 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Almeida, M.; Lins, R.D.; Bernardino, R.; Jesus, D.; Lima, B. A New Binarization Algorithm for Historical Documents. J. Imaging 2018, 4, 27. Almeida, M.; Lins, R.D.; Bernardino, R.; Jesus, D.; Lima, B. A New Binarization Algorithm for Historical Documents. J. Imaging 2018, 4, 27.
Abstract
Monochromatic documents claim for much less computer bandwidth for network transmission and storage space than their color or even grayscale equivalent. The binarization of historical documents is far more complex than recent ones as paper aging, color, texture, translucidity, stains, back-to-front interference, kind and color of ink used in handwritting, printing process, digitalization process, etc. are some of the factors that affect binarization. This article presents a new binarization algorithm for historical documents. The new global filter proposed is performed in four steps: filtering the image using a bilateral filter, splitting image into the RGB components, decision-making for each RGB channel based on an adaptive binarization method inspired by Otsu's method with a choice of the threshold level, and classification of the binarized images to decide which of the RGB components best preserved the document information in the foreground. The quantitative and qualitative assessment made with 21 binarization algorithms in three sets of “real world” documents showed very good results.
Keywords
documents; binarization; back-to-front interference; bleeding
Subject
Computer Science and Mathematics, Information Systems
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Comments (0)
We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.
Leave a public commentSend a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment