A Computer-Vision System For Interpretation Of Paper-Based Maps

The goal of the research described in this paper is the design of an intelligent computer vision system to automatically extract information from paper-based maps and answer queries related to spatial features and structure a geographical data. The foundation to such a system is a set. of powerful image analysis algorithms to operate on digitized images of paper-based maps. Efficient algorithms to orient map images, detect symbols, identify and track various types of lines, follow closed contours, compute distances, find shortest paths, etc. have been developed. An intelligent query processor analyzes the queries presented by the user in a predefined syntax, controls the operation of the image processing algorithms, and interacts with the user. The query processor is written in LISP and calls image analysis routines written in FORTRAN. In this paper we describe the image analysis algorithms and present their effectiveness in extracting information from a simplified map image of 2,048 x 2,048 pixels.