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An Efficient Character Image Enhancement and Region Segmentation Using Watershed Transformation

Watershed 변환을 이용한 효율적인 문자 영상 향상 및 영역 분할

  • Choi, Young-Kyoo (Dept.of Electric Electronics Computer Engineering, Dankook University) ;
  • Rhee, Sang-Burm (Dept.of Electric Electronics Computer Engineering, Dankook University)
  • 최영규 (단국대학교 대학원 전자공학과) ;
  • 이상범 (단국대학교 전기전자·컴퓨터공학부)
  • Published : 2002.08.01

Abstract

Off-line handwritten character recognition is in difficulty of incomplete preprocessing because it has not dynamic information has various handwriting, extreme overlap of the consonant and vowel and many error image of stroke. Consequently off-line handwritten character recognition needs to study about preprocessing of various methods such as binarization and thinning. This paper considers running time of watershed algorithm and the quality of resulting image as preprocessing for off-line handwritten Korean character recognition. So it proposes application of effective watershed algorithm for segmentation of character region and background region in gray level character image and segmentation function for binarization by extracted watershed image. Besides it proposes thinning methods that effectively extracts skeleton through conditional test mask considering routing time and quality of skeleton, estimates efficiency of existing methods and this paper's methods as running time and quality. Average execution time on the previous method was 2.16 second and on this paper method was 1.72 second. We prove that this paper's method removed noise effectively with overlap stroke as compared with the previous method.

오프라인 필기체 문자 인식은 동적인 정보를 가지고 있지 않고, 다양한 필기와 자음과 모음의 겹침이 심하며, 획 사이의 잡영을 많이 가지고 있어 불완전한 전처리를 수행하여야 하는 어려움이 있다. 따라서 오프라인 필기체 문자 인식은 다양한 방법의 전처리 즉 이진화 및 세선화에 대한 연구가 필요하다. 본 논문에서는 오프라인 필기체 한글 문자 인식의 전처리로서 워터쉐드 알고리즘의 수행 시간과 결과 영상의 품질을 고려해 그레이 레벨 문자 영상에서의 문자 영역과 배경 영역의 분할을 위한 효과적인 워터쉐드 알고리즘의 적용 방법과 추출된 워터쉐드 영상을 이진화하는 분할 함수를 제안한다. 또한 수행 시간과 골격선의 품질을 고려한 조건 검사 마스크를 통해서 효과적으로 골격선을 추출하는 세선화 방법을 제안하고 기존의 방법과 본 논문 방법을 수행 시간과 품질로써 성능을 평가한다. 실험 결과 기존의 방법은 평균 2.16초, 본 논문 방법은 평균 1.72초의 수행 시간이 걸렸다. 또한 결과 영상의 품질은 본 논문 방법이 문자 획 사이의 잡영을 효과적으로 처리함을 알 수 있었다.

Keywords

References

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