Effective Uyghur Language Text Detection in Complex Background Images for Traffic Prompt Identification

Text detection in complex background images is a challenging task for intelligent vehicles. Actually, almost all the widely-used systems focus on commonly used languages while for some minority languages, such as the Uyghur language, text detection is paid less attention. In this paper, we propose an effective Uyghur language text detection system in complex background images. First, a new channel-enhanced maximally stable extremal regions (MSERs) algorithm is put forward to detect component candidates. Second, a two-layer filtering mechanism is designed to remove most non-character regions. Third, the remaining component regions are connected into short chains, and the short chains are extended by a novel extension algorithm to connect the missed MSERs. Finally, a two-layer chain elimination filter is proposed to prune the non-text chains. To evaluate the system, we build a new data set by various Uyghur texts with complex backgrounds. Extensive experimental comparisons show that our system is obviously effective for Uyghur language text detection in complex background images. The F-measure is 85%, which is much better than the state-of-the-art performance of 75.5%.