Text Detection from Natural Scene Images: Towards a System for Visually Impaired Persons

We propose a system that reads the text encountered in natural scenes with the aim to provide assistance to the visually impaired persons. This paper describes the system design and evaluates several character extraction methods. Automatic text recognition from natural images receives a growing attention because of potential applications in image retrieval, robotics and intelligent transport system. Camera-based document analysis becomes a real possibility with the increasing resolution and availability of digital cameras. However, in the case of a blind person, finding the text region is the first important problem that must be addressed, because it cannot be assumed that the acquired image contains only characters. At first, our system tries to find in the image areas with small characters. Then it zooms into the found areas to retake higher resolution images necessary for character recognition. In the present paper, we propose four character-extraction methods based on connected co...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ICPR
• Authors: Nobuo Ezaki, Marius Bulacu, Lambert Schomaker
• Keywords: Character Extraction Methods, Computer Vision, Effective Extraction Method, ICPR 2004, Rule-based Connected Component