Separator and content based approach for table extraction in handwritten chemistry documents

In this paper we present a separator line and content analysis based approach for table structure extraction in handwritten chemistry documents. A first module based on Hough Transform technique is used to detect all graphic lines in a document. The resulting grid is analyzed in order to find the cell boundaries. In case of absence of these lines, a second module uses content information to define boundaries between cells. The digits, representing the dominant components in the handled tables, are identified using a multistage classification system. Then, the digit cartography is analyzed based on syntactical rules in order to find cell boundaries. The proposed method has been tested on a set of handwritten chemistry documents and experimental results indicate satisfactory performance.