DETECTION AND EXTRACTION OF ELEMENTS CONSTITUTING IMAGES IN UNSTRUCTURED DOCUMENT FILES

A method and a system for detecting and extracting images in an electronic document are disclosed. The method includes receiving an electronic document and identifying elements of a page. The identified elements include a set of graphical elements and a set of text elements. The method may include identifying and excluding elements which serve as graphical page constructs and/or text formatting elements. The page can then be segmented, based on (remaining) graphical elements and identified white spaces, to generate a set of image blocks. Text elements that are associated with a respective image block are identified as captions. Overlapping candidate images are then grouped to form a new image. The new image can thus include candidate images which would, without the identification of their caption(s), each be treated as a respective image.