CHARACTER SLANT RECOGNITION IN A WORD IMAGE

An Image processing apparatus and method for character slant detection and correction is disclosed. The apparatus comprises: scanning logic for scanning a word image and applying a local slant test to each pixel to determine whether in the image at the pixel there is local character slant to the left, to the right or neither and storing a local slant flag accordingly. Also disclosed is logic for combining the local slant flags for the pixels in each row and applying a significance test to the result to obtain, for the row, a row-slant flag indicative of whether in the row there is greater number of pixels having a local character slant to the right, a greater number of pixels in the row having a character slant to the left or neither. The logic for combining the row-slant flags for all of the rows to determine a shear parameter and logic for applying a shear transformation to the image in accordance with the shear parameter is also disclosed.