Towards Text Recognition in Natural Scene Images

In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for text detection in natural scene images. The proposed methodology is based on an efficient binarization and enhancement technique followed by a suitable connected component analysis procedure. Image binarization successfully processes natural scene images having shadows, non-uniform illumination, low contrast and large signaldependent noise. Connected component analysis is used to define the final binary images that mainly consist of text regions. The proposed methodology results in increased success rates for commercial OCR engines. Experimental results based on a public database of natural scene images prove the efficiency of the proposed approach. Index Terms – Text Detection, Scene Text Recognition, Image Binarization, Connected Components Analysis, OCR