Adaptive Image Contrast with Binarization Technique for Degraded Document Image

----------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT--------------------------------------------------Segmentation of text from badly degraded document images is very challenging tasks due to the high inter/intra variation between the document background and the foreground text of different document images. In this paper, we propose a novel document image binarization technique that addresses these issues by using adaptive image contrast. The Adaptive Image Contrast is a combination of the local image contrast and the local image gradient that is tolerant to text and background variation caused by different types of document degradations. In the proposed technique, an adaptive contrast map is first constructed for an input degraded document image. The contrast map is then binarized and combined with Canny’s edge map to identify the text stroke edge pixels. The document text is further segmented by a local threshold that is estimated based on the intensities of detected text stroke edge pixels within a local window. The proposed method is simple, robust, and involves minimum parameter tuning. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Date of Submission: 21 November 2014 Date of Accepted: 25 December 2014 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------