Automatic table detection in document images

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel technique for automatic table detection in document images. Lines and tables are among the most frequent graphic, non-textual entities in documents and their detection is directly related to the OCR performance as well as to the document layout description. We propose a workflow for table detection that comprises three distinct steps: (i) image preprocessing; (ii) horizontal and vertical line detection and (iii) table detection. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated by using a performance evaluation scheme which considers a great variety of documents such as forms, newspapers/magazines, scientific journals, tickets/bank cheques, certificates and handwritten documents. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.