We propose a novel system for the automatic detection and recognition of text in traffic signs. Scene structure is used to define search regions within the image, in which traffic sign candidates are then found. Maximally stable extremal regions (MSERs) and hue, saturation, and value color thresholding are used to locate a large number of candidates, which are then reduced by applying constrain...

A novel procedure for establishing wide-baseline correspondence is introduced. Tentative correspondences are established by matching photometrically normalised colour measurements represented in a local affine frame. The affine frames are obtained by a number of affine invariant constructions on robustly detected maximally stable extremal regions of data-dependent shape. Several processes for l...

Automated text detection is a difficult computer vision task. In order to accurately detect and identity text in an image or video, two major problems must be addressed. The primary problem is implementing a robust and reliable method for distinguishing text vs non-text regions in images and videos. Part of the difficulty stems from the almost unlimited combinations of fonts, lighting condition...

This thesis explores component trees, hierarchical structures from Mathematical Mor-phology, and their application to image retrieval and related tasks. The distinct com-ponent trees are analyzed and a novel classification into two superclasses is proposed,as well as a contribution to indexing and representation of the hierarchies using den-drograms. The first contribution t...

A novel method for digitization of paper structure, based on automated microtomy combined with optical microscopy, is presented. The concept is capable of obtaining digitized 3D paper structure data for sample areas in the range of several square millimeters within a time range of several hours. Individual fibers are tracked through the 3D fiber network using advanced image analysis algorithms....

Identification of the footwear traces from crime scenes is an important yet largely forgotten aspect of forensic intelligence and evidence. We present initial results from a developing automatic footwear classification system. The underlying methodology is based on large numbers of localized features located using MSER feature detectors. These features are transformed into robust SIFT or GLOH d...

Recently several research works propose image segmentation algorithms using MSER. However they aim at segmenting out specific regions corresponding to user-defined objects. This paper proposes a novel algorithm based on MSER which segments natural images without user intervention and captures multi-scale structure. The algorithm collects MSERs and then partitions whole image plane by redrawing ...

A method for the automatic detection and recognition of text and symbols painted on the road surface is presented. Candidate regions are detected as maximally stable extremal regions (MSER) in a frame which has been transformed into an inverse perspective mapping (IPM) image, showing the road surface with the effects of perspective distortion removed. Detected candidates are then sorted into wo...

Observing that text in virtually any script is formed of strokes, we propose a novel easy-to-implement stroke detector which is significantly faster and produces significantly less false detections than the detectors commonly used in scene text localization. First, stroke-specific keypoints are efficiently detected. Text fragments are subsequently extracted by local thresholding guided by keypo...