Nested segmentation: an approach for layout analysis in document classification

Office information systems (OISs) are employed to support office workers in their management of information and to assist them in their daily work. In the OISs, document classification is one of the major functional capabilities. Classifying a document can be facilitated through the layout analysis of the document. A new approach to the layout analysis, called nested segmentation, is introduced. The layout relationships of components of a document are defined in terms of the adjacency of blocks. Given the adjacency of blocks, an adjacent block graph is introduced where the problem of the nested segmentation is transformed to a classic minimal cut problem for the graph. Also, an ordered labeled tree structure (L-S-Tree) is introduced to represent the segmented document for document classification