Abstract: In pattern recognition [8, 14], a key issue to be addressed when designing a system is how to represent input patterns. Feature vectors is a common option. That is, a set of numerical features describing relevant properties of the pattern are computed and arranged in a vector form. The main advantages of this kind of representation are computational simplicity and a well sound mathematical foundation. Thus, a large number of operations are available to work with vectors and a large repository of algorithms for pattern analysis and classification exist. However, the simple structure of feature vectors might not be the best option for complex patterns where nonnumerical features or relations between different parts of the pattern become relevant.

Abstract: This chapter describes the most relevant approaches for the analysis of graphical documents. The graphics recognition pipeline can be splitted into three tasks. The low level or lexical task extracts the basic units composing the document. The syntactic level is focused on the structure, i.e., how graphical entities are constructed, and involves the location and classification of the symbols present in the document. The third level is a functional or semantic level, i.e., it models what the graphical symbols do and what they mean in the context where they appear. This chapter covers the lexical level, while the next two chapters are devoted to the syntactic and semantic level, respectively. The main problems reviewed in this chapter are raster-to-vector conversion (vectorization algorithms) and the separation of text and graphics components. The research and industrial communities have provided standard methods achieving reasonable performance levels. Hence, graphics recognition techniques can be considered to be in a mature state from a scientific point of view. Additionally this chapter provides insights on some related problems, namely, the extraction and recognition of dimensions in engineering drawings, and the recognition of hatched and tiled patterns. Both problems are usually associated, even integrated, in the vectorization process.

Abstract: The importance of logos and trademarks in nowadays society is indisputable, variably seen under a positive light as a valuable service for consumers or a negative one as a catalyst of ever-increasing consumerism. This chapter discusses the technical approaches for enabling machines to work with logos, looking into the latest methodologies for logo detection, localization, representation, recognition, retrieval, and spotting in a variety of media. This analysis is presented in the context of three different applications covering the complete depth and breadth of state of the art techniques. These are trademark retrieval systems, logo recognition in document images, and logo detection and removal in images and videos. This chapter, due to the very nature of logos and trademarks, brings together various facets of document image analysis spanning graphical and textual content, while it links document image analysis to other computer vision domains, especially when it comes to the analysis of real-scene videos and images.

Abstract: We describe a method for hand-drawn symbol recognition based on deformable template matching able to handle uncertainty and imprecision inherent to hand-drawing. Symbols are represented as a set of straight lines and their deformations as geometric transformations of these lines. Matching, however, is done over the original binary image to avoid loss of information during line detection. It is defined as an energy minimization problem, using a Bayesian framework which allows to combine fidelity to ideal shape of the symbol and flexibility to modify the symbol in order to get the best fit to the binary input image. Prior to matching, we find the best global transformation of the symbol to start the recognition process, based on the distance between symbol lines and image lines. We have applied this method to the recognition of dimensions and symbols in architectural floor plans and we show its flexibility to recognize distorted symbols.