Character recognition of Japanese newspaper headlines with graphical designs

Minako Sawaki; Norihiro Hagita

doi:10.1117/12.234718

7 March 1996 Character recognition of Japanese newspaper headlines with graphical designs

Minako Sawaki, Norihiro Hagita

Proceedings Volume 2660, Document Recognition III; (1996) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.234718
Event: Electronic Imaging: Science and Technology, 1996, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Graphical designs are often used in Japanese newspaper headlines to indicate hot articles. However, conventional OCR software seldom recognizes characters in such headlines because of the difficulty of removing the designs. This paper proposes a method that recognizes these characters without needing removal of the graphical designs. First, the number of text-line regions and the averaged character heights are roughly extracted from the local distribution of the black and white runs observed in a rectangular window while the window is shifted pixel- by-pixel along the direction of the text-line. Next, normalized text-line regions are yielded by normalizing their heights to the height of binary reference patterns in a dictionary. Next, displacement matching is applied to the normalized text-line region for character recognition. A square window at each position is matched against binary reference patterns while being shifted pixel-by-pixel along the direction of the text-line. The complementary similarity measure, which is robust against graphical designs, is used as a discriminant function. When the maximum similarity value at each position exceeds the threshold, which is automatically determined from the degree of degradation in the square window, the character category of this similarity value is specified as a recognized category. Experimental results for fifty Japanese newspaper headlines show that the method achieves recognition rates of over 90%, much higher than a conventional method (17%).

Citation Download Citation

Minako Sawaki and Norihiro Hagita "Character recognition of Japanese newspaper headlines with graphical designs", Proc. SPIE 2660, Document Recognition III, (7 March 1996); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.234718

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available