Evaluation of Bernsen enhancement method applied to Arabic manuscripts

Abstract

The ancient Arabic manuscripts are considered to be more complex regarding enhancement compared to others written in other languages. Existing binarization techniques focus on either finding an appropriate global threshold for the whole image or adapting a local threshold for each area is re-processed separately to achieve better quality. This enhancement process aims to remove noises, strains, uneven illumination, etc. This paper presents an evaluation of the Bernsen binarization technique that is frequently cited in the literature. The goal of our work in a middle term is to evaluate binarization methods using new metrics based on the human observation. Preliminary results show that Bernsen's method works fine regarding readability of the text, elimination of spots and noise.