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Contextualization of the Problem Problem scenario Challenge State of the art Proposed method
Binarization
Stroke Segmentation
Feature Extraction
SF
Exclusion Measuring
SG
Brand Classification
G
Brand Logo Image Database
Binarization
Stroke Segmentation
Feature Extraction
F G
Yes
No
SF
Candidate is rejected
Challenge
The techniques for the segmentation of isolated lines are trivial, but the methods of detection and separation of overlapping curves are not. We need to locally analyze the regions of the strokes and establish some criteria to determine the existence of X-like intersections and T-like junctions.
Nevertheless, there are certain conditions where these methods may fail to correctly segment a set of overlapping strokes, e.g., when junctions or intersections occur at very small angles or on a region with high curvature.
Figure: A terminal point, ( ) = 1 labeled ; a normal point, ( ) = 2 labeled ; a T-like junction point, ( ) = 3 labeled ; a X-like intersection point, ( ) = 4 labeled ; and an isolated dot, ( ) = 0 labeled .
Primitive strokes
A primitive stroke is the union of one or more primary strokes, provided that the resulting region determines a continuous 2-dimensional curve or a simple polygonal. This definition allows for two or more primary strokes joined by L-vertexes to be treated as primitive strokes. E.g., in Fig. 3.
Stroke segmentation
Stage 1 Primary stroke separation
1) Junction and intersection detection
A successful extraction of a primary stroke relies, primarily, on the correct identication of singular points.
Stroke segmentation
Stage 2 Primitive stroke reconstruction
Orientation space mapping To determine which primary strokes are part of the same primitive stroke and group them together, we proceed as follows:
Stroke segmentation
Stage 2 Primitive stroke reconstruction
Orientation space mapping
Stroke segmentation
Stage 2 Primitive stroke reconstruction
Primary stroke grouping
Figure: Each continuous curve in the orientation space determines a primitive stroke.
Implementation details
Primary stroke separation
Once a suitable skeleton is achieved, we take the degree of freedom ( ) of each pixel in the skeleton as the number of pixels in the 8-neighborhood of pixel .
Implementation details
Primary stroke grouping
Each primary stroke is extracted and labelled, then they are mapped into the orientation space to group them in the primitive strokes forming the cattle brand. We only map the gray colored regions from the Fig. 8i.e., the singular regionsand its surrounding pixels to detect if the neighboring primary strokes are connected in the orientation space.
Implementation details
Primitive stroke segmentation
A set of connected primary strokes is treated as an unique primitive stroke. The primitive strokes so obtained still preserve their original spatial distribution in the 2-dimensional image plane.
Experimental results
n=315 real brand images
Table: Segmentation error rates for two stroke segmentation approaches. One that performs junction analysis on thick lines using the Point to Boundary Orientation Distance (PBOD) technique and our approach using the skeleton of the brand. Junction analysis using Transformation Displacement PBOD 13.3% Skeleton 8.3%
Rotation
Scaling Stretching Shearing Mean Values
18.1%
13.7% 14.9% 16.2% 15.2%
11.4%
9.0% 9.5% 10.7% 9.8%
We presented a stroke segmentation algorithm suitable to perform similarity measuring of handwritten livestock brand images. The skeleton of the brand sketch is used to identify the strokes junction and intersection points, and to determine the primary strokes that compose the cattle brand. An orientation space mapping technique is used to group these primary strokes in primitive strokes that will allow the local shape feature extraction needed to perform the similarity measuring.
Slight improvement: Compared to another well known technique, the proposed method shows a slight improvement in the segmentation of the strokes in cattle brand images undergoing several kinds of transformations.