DOCUMENT MATCHING USING STRUCTUAL INFORMATION

A method and apparatus for document matching using structural information. The present invention provides a method and apparatus for identifying documents based on the visual structure of the document. Structural information describing a document is generated and used to search for matching stored documents. In one embodiment, images are converted to a point set and the point sets are compared. For example, an image of a document that is sought is converted to a point set and the point set is compared to point sets corresponding to stored documents. When point sets match within a predetermined tolerance, the documents match. In one embodiment, the Hausdorff measure is used to compare point sets.