Automatic detection and recognition of Korean text in outdoor signboard images

In this paper, an automatic translation system for Korean signboard images is described. The system includes detection and extraction of text for the recognition and translation of shop names into English. It deals with impediments caused by different font styles and font sizes, as well as illumination changes and noise effects. Firstly, the text region is extracted by an edge-histogram, and the text is binarized by clustering. Secondly, the extracted text is divided into individual characters, which are recognized by using a minimum distance classifier. A shape-based statistical feature is adopted, which is adequate for Korean character recognition, and candidates of the recognition results are generated for each character. The final translation step incorporates the database of shop names, to obtain the most probable result from the list of candidates. The system has been implemented in a mobile phone and is demonstrated to show acceptable performance. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.