A fast and efficient method for extracting text paragraphs and graphics from unconstrained documents

Outlines a fast and efficient method for extracting graphics and text paragraphs from printed documents. The method presented is based on bottom-up approach to document analysis and it achieves very good performance in most cases. During the preprocessing characters are linked together to form blocks. Created blocks are segmented, labelled and merged into paragraphs. Simultaneously, graphics are extracted from the image. Algorithms for each step of processing are presented. Also, the obtained experimental results are included