This paper presents a new framework for in-depth analysis of the performance of layout analysis methods. Contrary to existing approaches aimed at evaluation or benchmarking, the proposed framework provides detailed information at various levels that can be used by method developers to identify specific problems and improve their work. Complex layouts are supported as well as the flexible configuration of goal-oriented performance analysis scenarios. The comparison of segmentation results against the ground truth is performed in a very efficient way based on a decomposition of any region shape into an interval-based description. The framework has been validated using the dataset and method results of the ICDAR2005 Page Segmentation Competition.