Embedded Image Processing System for Automatic Page Segmentation of Open Book Images

Abstract

In this paper the image processing stage of an automatic book scanning system is presented. The scanning system is composed of a camera, an image processing platform, an illumination subsystem and a hardware platform which holds an open book to an adequate distance to the camera. The image processing platform communicates to a camera in order to obtain the input image of open book. Once the open book image acquired, the image processing stage applies a set of operators over the image in order to segment and store images of the individual book pages. Segmentation analysis and performance evaluation of the proposed image processing platform are performed. Results of the segmentation process show that at least 75% of the pages are correctly segmented. Execution time results show that up to 18 pages per minute can be automatically digitalized. The proposed system was implemented on two different processing platforms, a laptop computer with an Intel processor and a Raspberry-Pi minicomputer.