Degraded Document Image Enhancing in Spatial Domain Using Adaptive Contrasting and Thresholding

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
ISSN : 2277-7881; IMPACT FACTOR - 2.735; IC VALUE:5.16

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 9(2), SEPTEMBER 2014
DEGRADED DOCUMENT IMAGE ENHANCING IN SPATIAL

DOMAIN USING ADAPTIVE CONTRASTING AND
THRESHOLDING
I.
Dr. P V Ramaraju
G.Nagaraju
Professor
Department of ECE
SRKR Engg. College
Bhimavaram, India.
Asst.Professor,
Department of ECE
SRKR Engg. College
Bhimavaram, India.
V.Rajasekhar
M.Tech Student
Department of ECE
SRKR Engg. College
Bhimavaram, India.
INTRODUCTION
Robust binarization gives the possibility of a correct extraction
of the sketched line drawing or text from its background. For the
binarization of images many algorithms have been implemented.
Thresholding is a sufficiently accurate and high processing speed
segmentation approach to monochrome image. This paper describes a
modified logical thresholding method for binarization of seriously
degraded and very poor quality gray-scale document images.
In general there are two types of image thresholding techniques
available: global and local. In the global thresholding technique a gray
level image is converted into a binary image based on an image
intensity value called global threshold which is fixed in the whole image
domain whereas in local thresholding technique, threshold value can
vary from one pixel location to next. Thus, global thresholding converts
an input image I to a binary image G as follows G(i, j) = 1 for I (i, j)
T, or, G(i, j) = 0 for I (i, j) < T, where T is the threshold, G (i, j) =
1 for foreground and G (i, j) = 0 for background.
Whereas, for a local threshold, the threshold T is a function over
the image domain, i.e.,T= T(x, y). In addition, if in constructing the
threshold value/surface the algorithm adapts itself to the image
intensity values, then it is called dynamic or adaptive threshold.
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In a general setting, thresholding can be expressed as a test

operation that tests against a function T of the form [1]:
T=
T[x , y, h, I ] , where, I is the input image and h denotes some local

property of this point for example, the average gray level of a
neighborhood centered on (x, y).
Threshold selection depends on the information available in the
gray level histogram of the image. We know that an image function I(x,
y) can be expressed as the product of a reflectance function and an
illumination function based on a simple image formation model. If the
illumination component of the image is uniform then the gray level
histogram of the image is clearly bimodal, because the gray levels of
object pixels are significantly different from the gray levels of the
background. It indicates that one mode is populated from object pixels
and the other mode is populated from background pixels.
Then objects could be easily partitioned by placing a single
global threshold at the neck or valley at the histogram. However, in
reality bimodality in histograms does not occur very often.
Consequently, a fixed threshold level based on the information of the
gray level histogram will fail totally to separate objects from the
background. In this scenario we turn our attention to adaptive local
threshold surface where threshold value changes over the image
domain to fit the spatially changing background and lighting
conditions.
Over the years many threshold selection methods have been
proposed. Otsu has suggested a global image thresholding technique
where the optimal global threshold value is ascertained by maximizing
the between-class variance with an exhaustive search [2]. Sahoo et al.
[3] claim that Otsus method is suitable for real world applications with
regard to uniformity and shape measures. Though Otsus method is one
of the most popular methods for global thresholding, it does not work
319

well for many real world images where a significant overlap exists in
the gray level histogram between the pixel intensity values of the
objects and the background due to un-even and poor illumination.
As many degraded documents do not have a clear bimodal
pattern, global thresholding [4][7] is usually not a suitable approach
for the degraded document binarization. Adaptive thresholding [8]
[14], which estimates a local threshold for each document image pixel,
is often a better approach to deal with different variations within
degraded document images. For example, the early window-based
adaptive thresholding techniques [12], [13] estimate the local threshold
by using the mean and the standard variation of image pixels within a
local neighborhood window.
The local image contrast and the local image gradient are very useful
features for segmenting the text from the document background
because the document text usually has certain image contrast to the
neighboring document background.
The image gradient is defined as follows
1
G(x,y)=fmax(x, y) fmin(x,y )
The Local contrast is defined as follows
D ( x, y )
f
f
max
max
( x, y)
( x, y)
min
min
( x, y)
( x, y)
Where is a positive but infinitely small number that is added in case

the local maximum is equal to 0.
II.
PROPOSED METHOD
This section describes the proposed document image

binarization techniques. Given a degraded document image, an
adaptive contrast map is first constructed. The text is then segmented
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based on the local threshold that is estimated from the detected text
stroke edge pixels. Some post processing is further applied to improve
the document binarization quality.
A. Contrast Image Construction
The image contrast in Equation 2 has one typical limitation that
it may not handle document images with the bright text properly. This
is because a weak contrast will be calculated for stroke edges of the
bright text where the denominator in Equation 2 will be large but the
numerator will be small. To overcome this over-normalization problem,
we combine the local image contrast with the local image gradient and
derive an adaptive local image contrast as follows
Da ( x, y) D(x, y) (1 )( fmax (x, y) fmin ( x, y)) 3
Where
D(x,
y)
denotes the local contrast in Equation 2 and (fmax(x, y) fmin(x,y )) refers

to the local image gradient that is normalized to [0, 1]. The local
windows size is set to 3 empirically. is the weight between local
contrast and local gradient that is controlled based on the document
image statistical information. Ideally, the image contrast will be
assigned with a high weight (i.e. large ) when the document image has
significant intensity variation. So that the proposed binarization
technique depends more on the local image contrast that can capture
the intensity variation well and hence produce good results. Otherwise,
the local image gradient will be assigned with a high weight.
We model the mapping from document image intensity variation to by
a power function as follows
= (Std/128)
Where Std denotes the document image intensity standard

deviation, and is a pre-defined parameter. The power function has a
nice property in that it monotonically and smoothly increases from 0 to
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1 and its shape can be easily controlled by different . can be selected

from [0,], where the power function becomes a linear function when
= 1. Therefore, the local image gradient will play the major role in
Equation 3 when is large and the local image contrast will play the
major role when is small. The setting of parameter will be discussed
in the section of parameter selection.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
(a)
(b)
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(c)
Fig. 3. Contrast Images constructed using (a) local image gradient, (b)
local image contrast [15], and (c) our proposed method for the original
sample document images which are shown in Fig. 1 and 2, respectively.
Fig. 3 shows the contrast map of the sample document images in Fig. 1
and 2 that are created by using local image gradient, local image
contrast [15] and our proposed method in Equation 3, respectively.
B. Local Threshold Estimation
The text can then be extracted from the document background
pixels once the high contrast stroke edge pixels are detected properly.
Two characteristics can be observed from different kinds of document
images [15]: First, the text pixels are close to the detected text stroke
edge pixels. Second, there is a distinct intensity difference between the
high contrast stroke edge pixels and the surrounding background
pixels. The document image text can thus be extracted based on the
detected text stroke edge pixels as follows
Ne N min&& I ( x , y ) Emean Estd / 2
R ( x , y ) 1..
5
0..otherwise
Where Emean and Estd are the mean and the standard deviation of
the image intensity of the detected high contrast image pixels (within
the original document image) within the neighborhood window that can
be evaluated as follows
E mean
I ( x, y ) * (1 E ( x, y ))
neighbor
Ne
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E std
(( I ( x , y ) Emean ) * (1 E ( x , y ))) 2
neighbor
The size of the neighborhood window W can be set based on the

stroke width of the document image under study.
C. Post-Processing
Once the initial binarization result is derived from Equation 5
as described in previous subsections, the binarization result can be
further improved by incorporating certain domain knowledge as
described in Algorithm 1. First, the isolated foreground pixels that do
not connect with other foreground pixels are filtered out to make the
edge pixel set precisely. Second, the neighborhood pixel pair that lies on
symmetric sides of a text stroke edge pixel should belong to different
classes (i.e., either the document background or the foreground text).
One pixel of the pixel pair is therefore labeled to the other category if
both of the two pixels belong to the same class. Finally, some singlepixel artifacts along the text stroke boundaries are filtered out by using
several logical operators as described in[16].
Algorithm 1 Post-Processing Procedure
Require: The Input grayscale Document Image I, Initial Binary
Result B and Corresponding Binary Text Stroke Edge Image Edge
Ensure: The Final Binary Result Bf
1: Obtain the connect components of the stroke edge pixels in Edge.
2: Take out those pixels that do not connect with other pixels.
3: For removing isolated pixels, we need to check connectivity.
4: for Each remaining edge pixels (i, j ): do
5: Get its neighborhood pairs:
(i 1, j) & (i + 1, j); (i, j 1) &(i, j + 1)
324

6: if The pixels in the pairs belong to the same class (both text or
background) then
7: Classify the foreground and background pixels based on pixel values.
8: end if
9: end for
10: Remove single-pixel artifacts [16] along the text stroke boundaries
after the document thresholding.
11: Store the new binary result to Bf .
D. Parameter Selection
In the first experiment, we apply different to obtain different
power functions and test their performance. is close to 1 when is
small and the local image contrast Da dominates the adaptive image
contrast Da in Equation 3. On the other hand, Da is mainly influenced
by local image gradient when is large. At the same time, the variation
of for different document images increases when is close to 1. Under
such circumstance, the power function becomes more sensitive to the
global image intensity variation and appropriate weights can be
assigned to images with different characteristics.
The proposed method can assign more suitable to different images
when is closer to 1. Parameter should therefore be set around 1
when the adaptability of the proposed technique is maximized and
better and more robust binarization results can be derived from
different kinds of degraded document images.
III. RESULTS
This section evaluates the results for proposed document image
binarization techniques. Given a degraded document image, an
adaptive contrast map is first constructed. The text is then segmented
based on the local threshold that is estimated from the detected text
325

stroke edge pixels. Some post-processing is further applied to improve

the document binarization quality.
Example 1
Fig.4 input degraded document image having ink bleeding through

effect
Fig.5 Contrast image constructed based on proposed adaptive local

contrast map
Fig.6 Binarized resultant image constructed based on proposed local

thresholding and post processing.
326

Example 2
Fig.7 input degraded document image having ink bleeding through

effect
Fig.8 Contrast image constructed based on proposed adaptive local

contrast map
Fig.9 Binarized resultant image constructed based on proposed local

thresholding and post processing.
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IV. COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT

BINARIZATION METHODS
In this experiment, we quantitatively compare our proposed
method with Otsus method (OTSU) [2], Sauvolas method (SAUV)
[12], Niblacks method (NIBL) [13], Bernsens method (BERN) [8],
Gatos et al.s method (GATO) [17], and LMM method (LMM [15], BE
[16]). These are composed of the same series of document images that
suffer from several common document degradations such as smear,
smudge, bleed-through and low contrast.
Example 1
Fig. 10. Binarization results of the sample document image in Fig. 1(b)
produced by different methods. (a) OTSU [2]. (b) SAUV [12]. (c) NIBL
328

[13]. (d) BERN [8]. (e) GATO [17]. (f) LMM [15]. (g) BE [16]. (h)
Proposed.
Example 2
Fig. 11. Binarization results of the sample document image (PR 06) in
DIBCO 2011 dataset produced by different methods. (a) Input Image.
(b) OTSU [2]. (c) SAUV [12]. (d) NIBL [13]. (e) BERN [8]. (f) GATO
[17]. (g) LMM [15]. (h) BE [16]. (i) LELO [18]. (j) SNUS. (k) HOWE
[19]. (l) Proposed.
V.
CONCLUSION
This paper presents a simple and robust method of enhancing

degraded document images. The method proposed in this paper
constitutes binarization that is tolerant to different types of document
degradation such as non-uniform illumination, ink bleeding through
and document smear. This image binarization is based on local
thresholding along with adaptive contrast mapping. The proposed
method has been tested over various noise affected document images
and is binarized efficaciously. But we observed that the performance on
Bickley diary dataset needs to be improved, we will explore it in future.
329

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

ISSN : 2277-7881; IMPACT FACTOR - 2.735; IC VALUE:5.16