Scene text recognition in multiple frames based on text tracking

Text signage as visual indicators in natural scene plays an important role in navigation and notification in our daily life. Most previous methods of scene text extraction are developed from a single scene image. In this paper, we propose a multi-frame based scene text recognition method by tracking text regions in a video captured by a moving camera. The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, we present a framework of scene text recognition in multiple frames based on feature representation of scene text character (STC) for character prediction and conditional random field (CRF) model for word configuration. Second, a feature representation of STC is employed from dense sampled SIFT descriptors and Fisher Vector. Third, we collect a dataset for text information extraction from natural scene videos. Our proposed multi-frame scene text recognition is more compatible with image/video-based mobile applications. The experimental results demonstrate that STC prediction and word configuration in multiple frames based on text tracking significantly improves the performance of scene text recognition.