Reconstruction of torn documents using contour maps

Efficient and successful joining of torn pieces of papers to reconstruct the original documents is an important and challenging issue in many disciplines, especially in forensics and investigation sciences. Automation of the process by means of appropriate techniques can speed up the problem solving substantially. In this paper, we propose a fast, efficient, and useful technique for the reconstruction of hand-torn pages of documents from their images, using contour descriptors for shape-based matching. Chain code of the closed digital arc representing a contour, and its Minkowski sum, have been exploited in our reconstruction work. Experimental results demonstrate the strength and robustness of the method.