Binarization of degraded document image based on feature space partitioning and classification

In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for the binarization of degraded document images. We map the image into a 2D feature space in which the text and background pixels are separable, and then we partition this feature space into small regions. These regions are labeled as text or background using the result of a basic binarization algorithm applied on the original image. Finally, each pixel of the image is classified as either text or background based on the label of its corresponding region in the feature space. Our algorithm splits the feature space into text and background regions without using any training dataset. In addition, this algorithm does not need any parameter setting by the user and is appropriate for various types of degraded document images. The proposed algorithm demonstrated superior performance against six well-known algorithms on three datasets.