DOCUMENT IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD AND APPARATUS

A method for processing a document image includes: performing horizontal and vertical text line extraction on the document image; providing an overlapping matrix, a value of an element of the overlapping matrix indicating an overlapping relation between horizontal and vertical text lines; merging the overlapping matrix in the vertical and horizontal direction; determining one or more text overlapping regions in the document image, based on the values of the elements of the merged overlapping matrix; counting the total number of strokes or pixel points in the horizontal and vertical text lines, respectively, within one of the one or more text overlapping regions; and determining an orientation of the text overlapping region is horizontal if the total number of strokes or pixel points in the horizontal text lines is larger than that in the vertical text lines, otherwise, determining the orientation is vertical.