Detect text region in image using Opencv

Question

I have an image and want to detect the text regions in it.

I tried TiRG_RAW_20110219 project but the results are not satisfactory. If the input image is http://imgur.com/yCxOvQS,GD38rCa it is producing http://imgur.com/yCxOvQS,GD38rCa#1 as output.

Can anyone suggest some alternative. I wanted this to improve the output of tesseract by sending it only the text region as input.

Answer 1

import cv2   def captch_ex(file_name):     img = cv2.imread(file_name)      img_final = cv2.imread(file_name)     img2gray = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)     ret, mask = cv2.threshold(img2gray, 180, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)     image_final = cv2.bitwise_and(img2gray, img2gray, mask=mask)     ret, new_img = cv2.threshold(image_final, 180, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY)  # for black text , cv.THRESH_BINARY_INV     '''             line  8 to 12  : Remove noisy portion      '''     kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_CROSS, (3,                                                          3))  # to manipulate the orientation of dilution , large x means horizonatally dilating  more, large y means vertically dilating more     dilated = cv2.dilate(new_img, kernel, iterations=9)  # dilate , more the iteration more the dilation      # for cv2.x.x      _, contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(dilated, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)  # findContours returns 3 variables for getting contours      # for cv3.x.x comment above line and uncomment line below      #image, contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(dilated,cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL,cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_NONE)       for contour in contours:         # get rectangle bounding contour         [x, y, w, h] = cv2.boundingRect(contour)          # Don't plot small false positives that aren't text         if w < 35 and h < 35:             continue          # draw rectangle around contour on original image         cv2.rectangle(img, (x, y), (x + w, y + h), (255, 0, 255), 2)          '''         #you can crop image and send to OCR  , false detected will return no text :)         cropped = img_final[y :y +  h , x : x + w]          s = file_name + '/crop_' + str(index) + '.jpg'          cv2.imwrite(s , cropped)         index = index + 1          '''     # write original image with added contours to disk     cv2.imshow('captcha_result', img)     cv2.waitKey()   file_name = 'your_image.jpg' captch_ex(file_name)