Signature Segmentation from Document Images

Abstract

In this paper we propose a novel method for the extraction of signatures from document images. Instead of using a human defined set of features a part-based feature extraction method is used. In particular, we use the Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) to distinguish the machine printed text from signatures. Using SURF features makes the approach generally more useful and reliable for different resolution documents. We have evaluated our system on the publicly available Tobacco-800 dataset in order to compare it to previous work. Finally, all signatures were found in the images and less than half of the found signatures are false positives. Therefore, our system can be applied for practical use.