Mathematical Information Retrieval (MIR) from Scanned PDF Documents and MathML Conversion

Abstract

This paper describes part of an ongoing comprehensive research project that is aimed at generating a MathML format from images of mathematical expressions that have been extracted from scanned PDF documents. A MathML representation of a scanned PDF document reduces the document’s storage size and encodes the math- ematical notation and meaning. The MathML representation then becomes suitable for vocalization and accessible through the use of assistive technologies. In order to achieve an accurate layout analysis of a scanned PDF document, all textual and non-textual components must be recognised, identified and tagged. These components may be text or mathematical expressions and graphics in the form of images, figures, tables and/or diagrams. Mathematical expres- sions are one of the most significant components within scanned scientific and engineering PDF documents and need to be machine readable for use with assistive technologies. This research is a work in progress and includes multiple different modules: detecting and extracting mathematical expressions, recursive primitive component extraction, non- alphanumerical symbols recognition, structural semantic analysis and merging primitive components to generate the MathML of the scanned PDF document. An optional module converts MathML to audio format using a Text to Speech engine (TTS) to make the document accessible for vision-impaired users. Keywords: math recognition, graphics recognition, Mathematical Informati