Field-data grouping for form document processing using a gravitation-based algorithm

This paper presents a novel approach to grouping Chinese handwritten field-data of form documents using a gravitation-based algorithm. We develop an algorithm to extract handwritten field data which may be written out of the fields. We first extract and remove form lines for input form images. Next, we detect connected-components from remaining data, and compute the gravitation for each connected-component by using the black pixel counts as their mass. Then, we move connected-components to their field center according to their gravitation, since filled-in data have the locality property, that is, data of the same field are usually written in a local area consecutively. After moving these connected-components for a certain times, we can assign most components to the fields where they should be. Thus, we can determine which connected-components should be extracted for a particular field. Experimental results show that this proposed method can group field-data effectively