Robust Detection of Tables in Documents Using Scores from Table Cell Cores

Abstract

AbstractTable detection is an essential step in many document analysis systems. Tabular data are a pivotal form of information representation that can organize data in a conventional structure for comfortable and quick information retrieval and comparison. Detection of table structures in PDF files or images is a challenging task because of the variability of table layouts, and sometimes the tabular structures’ similarities with non-tabular elements like charts, plots, etc. In this work, we have presented a table detection method using a geometric analysis of the table cell cores that represents the table cell texts. The proposed method works by analyzing the text gap information, and hence it can detect the table cell cores, irrespective of the presence of the table boundary lines and cell-separating rule-lines. Experimentations have been done on various document images of complex structures from well-known datasets. The detection accuracies obtained by us corroborate the usefulness of the proposed method.