Geometric layout analysis in a wearable reading device for the blind and visually impaired

Abstract

Blind and visually impaired people can use a mobile device for accessing printed information, which is ubiquitous in everyday life. Thus, there is a need for a mobile easy-to-use reading device, capable of dealing with the complexity of the outdoor environment. In this paper a wearable camera based solution is presented, aiming at improving the performance of existing systems through the use of an integrated approach for the document processing. This particular publication covers the segmentation phase of the processing chain as wellas geometric analysis of the layout. Using a highly efficient approach we wereable to overcome the limitations of a mobile computing environment without compromising on the robustness of the result. In order to demonstrate the advantages of the presented algorithm for the specific field of application we compare its output to the results obtained by a state-of-the art commercial solution.