METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DIGITAL HALFTONE DOTS DETECTION AND REMOVAL IN BUSINESS DOCUMENTS

An image processing method for detection and removal of halftone dots includes converting a gray scale image into a binary thresholded image with halftone dots; identifying halftone regions within the binary thresholded image; and removing halftone dots from the identified halftone regions. The identifying halftone regions step is effected by classifying the binary thresholded image to produce a halftone classification map; reclassifying the halftone classification map to produce a halftone reclassification map of lines with plural halftone pixels in each line; merging the halftone pixels in each line in the halftone reclassification map to produce a halftone line map; and merging the lines of the halftone line map to produce a halftone region map.