Information extraction from images of paper-based maps - Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on

The goal of the research described in this paper is the design of a system to automatically extract information from paper-based maps and answer queries related to spatial features and structure of geographic data. The foundation to such a system is a set of image analysis algorithms to extract spatial features from images of paperbased maps. Efficient algorithms to detect symbols, identify and track various types of lines, follow closed contours, compute distances, find shortest paths, etc., from simplified map images have been developed. A 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.