초록
This paper proposes a new method of character segmentation in a grayscale image using the standard deviation. Firstly, the proposed method scans vertically the region of interest in an image in order to calculate a standard deviation for each scan line. Characters' standard deviations are much bigger than the background's. Therefore, it is possible to segment characters vertically using the differentiation of those two types of standard deviations. Secondly, the method scans each vertically segmented image horizontally at this time, and then segments each image similarly. The proposed method is implemented using C language in an embedded Linux system for a high-speed real-time image processing. Experiments were conducted by using credit card images. The results show that the proposed algorithm is quite successful for most credit cards. However, the method fails in some credit cards with strong background patterns.