16311352
DIAL 2004 working group report on acquisition quality control
This report summarizes the discussions of the Working Group on Acquisition Quality at the International Workshop on Document Image Analysis for Libraries, Palo Alto, CA, 23-24 January 2004. Acquisition of the image is one of the most time intensive components of forming a digital library, and the quality of the acquisition will affect all later stages of the digital library project. The current state of the art in acquisition is analyzed. Problems and suggested improvements for image acquisition and storage formats and the special problems associated with acquisition from microfilm follows. A list of general suggestions was developed which was complemented by a wish list of things the Working Group would like to see followed in acquisition discussions in the future
26474180
Adaptive confidence transform based classifier combination for Chinese character recognition
Abstract Classifier combination is an effective way to improve recognition performance. However, in Chinese character recognition the extremely large number of categories results in several difficulties for the combination. In order to overcome these difficulties a novel combination method is presented in this paper. It consists of three main components: adaptive confidence transform (ACT), consensus theoretic combination and reliability based speedup scheme. ACT, which can estimate a posteriori probabilities from raw measurement values, is the focus of this paper. Experimental results show a significant reduction of error rates in both printed (PCCR) and handwritten Chinese character recognition (HCCR).
13382977
Quality assurance in high volume document digitization: a survey
Quality assurance (QA) plays a critical role in high volume document digitization projects by making sure that the specified quality standard is reached under cost and time constraints. This paper takes a systematic view on this issue by summarizing and abstracting related existing work: quality bottlenecks and technical solutions throughout the whole processing pipeline, including cataloging, capture, image analysis and recognition, and error cascading; various strategies to conduct cost-effective QA, such as combination of auto-QA and manual QA, batch QA, special QA user interface, and open source QA
5163377
Handwritten numeral recognition using MFNN based multiexpert combination strategy
A novel unconstrained numeral recognition system using an MFNN (multilayered feedforward neural net)-based multi-expert combination strategy is proposed. Taking advantage of every method's confidence value as well as its output label, this strategy can improve the system's performance significantly with as few as two experts. Another novel feature of the system is that the multi-expert combination problem is converted into a new classification problem, and then the MFNNs are used to handle the combination adaptively. The proposed system has achieved promising results on the NIST database.
2250003
ICDAR 2003 robust reading competitions: entries, results, and future directions
Abstract.This paper describes the robust reading competitions for ICDAR 2003. With the rapid growth in research over the last few years on recognizing text in natural scenes, there is an urgent need to establish some common benchmark datasets and gain a clear understanding of the current state of the art. We use the term ‘robust reading’ to refer to text images that are beyond the capabilities of current commercial OCR packages. We chose to break down the robust reading problem into three subproblems and run competitions for each stage, and also a competition for the best overall system. The subproblems we chose were text locating, character recognition and word recognition. By breaking down the problem in this way, we hoped to gain a better understanding of the state of the art in each of the subproblems. Furthermore, our methodology involved storing detailed results of applying each algorithm to each image in the datasets, allowing researchers to study in depth the strengths and weaknesses of each algorithm. The text-locating contest was the only one to have any entries. We give a brief description of each entry and present the results of this contest, showing cases where the leading entries succeed and fail. We also describe an algorithm for combining the outputs of the individual text locators and show how the combination scheme improves on any of the individual systems.
8341476
Active document layout synthesis
Document layout analysis has been researched for many years. However, there is little work on the reverse of document layout analysis: document layout synthesis, whose goal is to generate logically correct and aesthetically appealing layout given the text/image contents and the flexible layout template. This paper introduces a new automatic document layout synthesis method, which can actively pursue the optimal text block height-width tradeoff simultaneously with the block position adjustment. The key idea is to use a cluster of linear functions to approximate the nonlinear height-width curve. Then two-pass simplex algorithm is used to solve the layout synthesis problem. This method has a wide range of applications, such as variable data printing (VDP), automatic table formatting, and automating document layout ground truth generation.
306293
A self-organizing semantic map for information retrieval
Self-organizing Semantic Map for Information Retrieval Xia Lin Dagobert Soergel Gary Marchionini College of Library and Information Services University of Maryland College Park, A neural network’s unsupervised learning algorithm, Kohonen’s feature map, is applied to constructing a selforganizing semantic map for information retrieval. The semantic map visualizes semantic relationships between input documents, and has properties of economic representation of data with their interrelationships. The potentials of the semantic map include using the map as a retrieval interface for an online bibliographic system. A prototype system that demonstrates this potential is described.
18690541
Real-time author co-citation mapping for online searching
Author searching is traditionally based on the matching of name strings. Special characteristics of authors as personal names and subject indicators are not considered. This makes it difficult to identify a set of related authors or to group authors by subjects in retrieval systems. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a prototype visualization system to enhance author searching. The system, called AuthorLink, is based on author co-citation analysis and visualization mapping algorithms such as Kohonen's feature maps and Pathfinder networks. AuthorLink produces interactive author maps in real time from a database of 1.26 million records supplied by the Institute for Scientific Information. The maps show subject groupings and more fine-grained intellectual connections among authors. Through the interactive interface the user can take advantage of such information to refine queries and retrieve documents through point-and-click manipulation of the authors' names.
21113165
Graphical representations of electronic search patterns
Increasing numbers of researchers and developers are collecting data that trace the processes of humancomputer interactions. Although a variety of methods are used to collect such data, all researchers share common problems in representing and analyzing continuous streams of data. A set of methods and tools for graphically representing the search patterns of users interacting with a variety of databases and hypertexts is under development as part of ongoing research in electronic information seeking. The methodology described in this article involves defining state spaces of user options within a system, capturing keystrokes or mouse moves as raw data, coding these data into the state spaces, and analyzing user moves through the state space as evidence of goal-directed informationseeking strategies and patterns. A tool for displaying user moves through a state space has been developed and is described. The tool graphically represents data in a variety of formats, allowing human pattern recognition capabilities to be applied for data analysis. Graphs can be represented for individual searches or for multiple searches done by either a single searcher or by several searchers working on the same search task.
32681772
Visual MeSH
Visual MeSH is a graphical interface developed to interact with real world databases such as the National Library of Medicine’s MetaThesaurus and MEDLINE. Visual MeSH makes it easy for the user to browse complex relationships through visual representation of thesaurus structures. It helps the user to select controlled vocabulary terms for online searching in the click-andchoose environment.
7373402
Co-cited author maps as interfaces to digital libraries: designing Pathfinder Networks in the humanities
Using data from the Arts and Humanities Citation Index for 1988-1997, we are attempting to generate co-cited author maps in real time that can serve as interfaces for document retrieval. Our novel approach is to start the maps by entering the name of a single author. Our system obtains a rank-ordered list of the other authors who are most often co-cited with the input name (e.g., the top 50) and then systematically pairs these other authors in turn to obtain their co-citation counts. The resulting matrix can be passed to a mapping program which groups the authors meaningfully to show the structure of the field implied by the input author's name. At present we are experimenting with Pathfinder Networks (PFNETs) as the mapping program, and show a PFNET for 25 authors in hermeneutics, a major field of the humanities. The documents co-citing the mapped authors are candidates for retrieval. We discuss desirable features and design considerations in retrieval interfaces based on PFNETs.