A Laplacian Method for Video Text Detection

In this paper, we propose an efficient text detection method based on the Laplacian operator. The maximum gradient difference value is computed for each pixel in the Laplacian-filtered image. K-means is then used to classify all the pixels into two clusters: text and non-text. For each candidate text region, the corresponding region in the Sobel edge map of the input image undergoes projection profile analysis to determine the boundary of the text blocks. Finally, we employ empirical rules to eliminate false positives based on geometrical properties. Experimental results show that the proposed method is able to detect text of different fonts, contrast and backgrounds. Moreover, it outperforms three existing methods in terms of detection and false positive rates.