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Main Authors: Greer, Ross, Ukani, Alisha, Izhikevich, Katherine, Fernandes, Earlence, Savage, Stefan, Snoeren, Alex C.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18925
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author Greer, Ross
Ukani, Alisha
Izhikevich, Katherine
Fernandes, Earlence
Savage, Stefan
Snoeren, Alex C.
author_facet Greer, Ross
Ukani, Alisha
Izhikevich, Katherine
Fernandes, Earlence
Savage, Stefan
Snoeren, Alex C.
contents Document alignment and registration play a crucial role in numerous real-world applications, such as automated form processing, anomaly detection, and workflow automation. Traditional methods for document alignment rely on image-based features like keypoints, edges, and textures to estimate geometric transformations, such as homographies. However, these approaches often require access to the original document images, which may not always be available due to privacy, storage, or transmission constraints. This paper introduces a novel approach that leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) outputs as features for homography estimation. By utilizing the spatial positions and textual content of OCR-detected words, our method enables document alignment without relying on pixel-level image data. This technique is particularly valuable in scenarios where only OCR outputs are accessible. Furthermore, the method is robust to OCR noise, incorporating RANSAC to handle outliers and inaccuracies in the OCR data. On a set of test documents, we demonstrate that our OCR-based approach even performs more accurately than traditional image-based methods, offering a more efficient and scalable solution for document registration tasks. The proposed method facilitates applications in document processing, all while reducing reliance on high-dimensional image data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_18925
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Words as Geometric Features: Estimating Homography using Optical Character Recognition as Compressed Image Representation
Greer, Ross
Ukani, Alisha
Izhikevich, Katherine
Fernandes, Earlence
Savage, Stefan
Snoeren, Alex C.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Document alignment and registration play a crucial role in numerous real-world applications, such as automated form processing, anomaly detection, and workflow automation. Traditional methods for document alignment rely on image-based features like keypoints, edges, and textures to estimate geometric transformations, such as homographies. However, these approaches often require access to the original document images, which may not always be available due to privacy, storage, or transmission constraints. This paper introduces a novel approach that leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) outputs as features for homography estimation. By utilizing the spatial positions and textual content of OCR-detected words, our method enables document alignment without relying on pixel-level image data. This technique is particularly valuable in scenarios where only OCR outputs are accessible. Furthermore, the method is robust to OCR noise, incorporating RANSAC to handle outliers and inaccuracies in the OCR data. On a set of test documents, we demonstrate that our OCR-based approach even performs more accurately than traditional image-based methods, offering a more efficient and scalable solution for document registration tasks. The proposed method facilitates applications in document processing, all while reducing reliance on high-dimensional image data.
title Words as Geometric Features: Estimating Homography using Optical Character Recognition as Compressed Image Representation
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.18925