A Generalized Method for Extracting Characters and Video Captions

Conventional character extraction methods extract character regions using methods such as color reduction, region split and merge and texture analysis from the whole image. Because these methods use many heuristic variables and thresholding values derived from a priori knowledge, it is difficult to generalize them algorithmically. In this paper, we propose a method that can extract character regions using a topographical feature extraction method and a point-line-region extension method. The proposed method can also solve the problems of conventional methods by reducing heuristic variables and generalizing thresholding values. We see that character regions can be extracted by generalized variables and thresolding values without using a priori knowledge of character region. Experimental results show that the candidate region extraction rate is 100%, and the character region extraction rate is over 98%.