Removal of artifacts from JPEG compressed document images

We present a segmentation-based post-processing method to remove compression artifacts from JPEG compressed document images. JPEG compressed images typically exhibit ringing and blocking artifacts, which can be objectionable to the viewer above certain compression levels. The ringing is more dominant around textual regions while the blocking is more visible in natural images. Despite extensive research, reducing these artifacts in an effective manner still remains challenging. Document images are often segmented for various reasons. As a result, the segmentation information in many instances is available without requiring additional computation. We have developed a low computational cost method to reduce ringing and blocking artifacts for segmented document images. The method assumes the textual parts and pictorial regions in the document have been separated from each other by an automatic segmentation technique. It performs simple image processing techniques to clean out ringing and blocking artifacts from these regions.