Form document identification using line structure based features

Form recognition is one of the special applications of document analysis (DA). We present a novel form recognition method by analyzing the line structure embedded in an input form document. First, all vertical and horizontal lines embedded in the form image are extracted. By analyzing the crossing relationships among horizontal lines and vertical lines, a line crossing relationship matrix can be built with each row corresponding to one horizontal line and each column corresponding to one vertical line. Moreover two line distance relationship matrices, horizontal and vertical line distance relationship matrices, are built by analyzing the distance relationships among horizontal lines and vertical lines, respectively. Last, the recognition task is performed by matching these three matrices. Experimental results reveal the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed method in recognizing form documents.