Patent ID: 9430703
Filing Date: 2016-08-30
CPC Classification: G06K

Claim Text:
1. A word segmentation method performed by a computer for segmenting a horizontal text line image into a plurality of word segments, comprising: (a) generating a horizontal projection profile of the text line image, the horizontal projection profile representing a number of black pixels within the text line image at each vertical position; (b) obtaining two major peak positions of the horizontal projection profile; (c) defining upper and lower boundaries of a center zone of the text line image based on the two major peak positions; (d) generating a vertical projection profile of the center zone, the vertical projection profile representing a number of black pixels within the center zone at each horizontal position; (e) obtaining locations and lengths of a plurality of spacing segments based on the vertical projection profile, each spacing segment being one or more consecutive horizontal positions where the number of black pixels are equal to or less than a threshold value; and (f) segmenting the text line into a plurality of word segments based on the plurality of spacing segments obtained in step (e) to generate sub-images containing the words.