Paper ID: 2312.00467

Unfolder: Fast localization and image rectification of a document with a crease from folding in half

A. M. Ershov, D. V. Tropin, E. E. Limonova, D. P. Nikolaev, V. V. Arlazarov

Presentation of folded documents is not an uncommon case in modern society. Digitizing such documents by capturing them with a smartphone camera can be tricky since a crease can divide the document contents into separate planes. To unfold the document, one could hold the edges potentially obscuring it in a captured image. While there are many geometrical rectification methods, they were usually developed for arbitrary bends and folds. We consider such algorithms and propose a novel approach Unfolder developed specifically for images of documents with a crease from folding in half. Unfolder is robust to projective distortions of the document image and does not fragment the image in the vicinity of a crease after rectification. A new Folded Document Images dataset was created to investigate the rectification accuracy of folded (2, 3, 4, and 8 folds) documents. The dataset includes 1600 images captured when document placed on a table and when held in hand. The Unfolder algorithm allowed for a recognition error rate of 0.33, which is better than the advanced neural network methods DocTr (0.44) and DewarpNet (0.57). The average runtime for Unfolder was only 0.25 s/image on an iPhone XR.

Submitted: Dec 1, 2023