Segmentation-Based Binarization for Color Degraded Images

Recently, a new kind of images taken by a camera in a "real-world" environment appeared. It implies different strong degradations missing in scanner-based pictures and the presence of complex backgrounds. In order to segment text more properly as possible, a new binarization technique is proposed using color information. This information is used at proper moments in the processing not from the beginning to have smaller regions-of-interest. It presents the advantage of reducing the computation time. In this paper, an accent is put on stroke analysis and character segmentation. The binarization method takes it into account in order to improve character segmentation and recognition afterwards.