Matching Table Structures of Historical Register Books using Association Graphs

Abstract

In this paper we present a template-based table structure matching using association graphs for handwritten/printed historical documents. The recognition of the table structure consisting of column and header information is the prerequisite for the subsequent row detection and handwritten text recognition used for information extraction. The table matching is done by detecting the maximum clique in an association graph, which represents the matching of the line information of the template and a document of interest. This allows for variations of widths and heights of rows and columns. The presented methodology is evaluated on historical register books (death records) of the Archive of the Diocese of Passau. The method shows a reliable detection of the structure of handwritten/printed tables with a mean cell match of 88.28%.