Automatic extraction of text regions and region borders for an electronic work surface

Abstract

The spatial separations between clusters of objects on the electronic work surface are analyzed to automatically generate borders, which may be used in at least two manners. The borders may become explicit editable borders within an output image. Alternatively, the borders created may be implicit ephemeral borders. According to an aspect, a method uses the sufficient stability grouping technique to determine grouping of elements in the input image array into the text lines in the output text lines array. According to another aspect, a method uses the sufficient stability grouping technique to determine the amount of vertical expansion to apply to each text line so as to create text regions in the output array which correspond to the text lines in the input text lines array. According to yet another aspect, a method takes the text regions array as input and extracts enclosure borders from the text regions. The method according to this aspect applies distance thresholding and edge labeling based upon the contents of the text lines array. According to still another aspect, a method extracts structured borders from the text regions array. The method according to this aspect applies two-dimensional projection operations based upon the contents of the text lines array. According to yet still another aspect, a method extracts freeform linear borders from the text regions array. The freeform linear borders result from a Voronoi tesselation performed upon the contents of text regions array.