Robust multifont OCR system from gray level images

Abstract

The paper presents a general robust OCR system designed for practical use and suited to unconstrained gray-level images grabbed from a CCD camera. The system works with minimum assumptions on font, text location, size, color and the background scene. The text blocks localization in complex scenes using a specific filter which enhances any text from the background without binarization. A special stage is designed to separate characters, even touched by using gray-level information. The authors also extract gray-level features which make the algorithm more reliable, in particular under poor printing conditions or bad contrast digitization.