MSER-Based Real-Time Text Detection and Tracking

Lluís Gómez i Bigorda, Dimosthenis Karatzas

Abstract: We present a hybrid algorithm for detection and tracking of text in natural scenes that goes beyond the full-detection approaches in terms of time performance optimization. A state-of-the-art scene text detection module based on Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) is used to detect text asynchronously, while on a separate thread detected text objects are tracked by MSER propagation. The cooperation of these two modules yields real time video processing at high frame rates even on low-resource devices.