Edge based binarization for video text images

Abstract

This paper introduces a binarization method based on edge for video text images, especially for images with complex background or low contrast. The binarization method first detects the contour of the text, and utilizes a local thresholding method to decide the inner side of the contour, and then fills up the contour to form characters that are recognizable to OCR software. Experiment results show that our method is especially effective on complex background and low contrast images.