Name Block Location in Facsimile Images Using Spatial/Visual Cues

We discuss here the name block location process of a messaging system which deals with facsimile images including handwritten items. This process is the first stage of an information extraction task which aims at extracting condensed information from such documents. The approach is based on the use of spatial/visual cues for selecting regions in the image where sender and recipient information can be found, These cues are based on the human visual grouping process. The start of the process is the binary image and its electronic version produced by an OCR system. A document processing stage first extracts layout components at a pseudo word level and detects handwritten components. The electronic version enables the selection of layout components including predefined printed keywords. These layout components are then grouped under spatial constraints to initialize a logical description. The logical objects searched for are the main field headers relative to the sender and the recipient and the sender name. Experimental results on the performance of the approach are presented.