How to get the location of all text present in an image using OpenCV?

Here’s a potential approach using morphological operations to filter out non-text contours. The idea is:

  1. Obtain binary image. Load image, grayscale, then
    Otsu’s threshold

  2. Remove horizontal and vertical lines. Create horizontal and vertical kernels using cv2.getStructuringElement() then remove lines with cv2.drawContours()

  3. Remove diagonal lines, circle objects, and curved contours. Filter using contour area cv2.contourArea()
    and contour approximation cv2.approxPolyDP()
    to isolate non-text contours

  4. Extract text ROIs and OCR. Find contours and filter for ROIs then OCR using
    Pytesseract.


Removed horizontal lines highlighted in green

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Removed vertical lines

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Removed assorted non-text contours (diagonal lines, circular objects, and curves)

enter image description here

Detected text regions

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import cv2
import numpy as np
import pytesseract

pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = r"C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe"

# Load image, grayscale, Otsu's threshold
image = cv2.imread('1.jpg')
gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
thresh = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY_INV + cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
clean = thresh.copy()

# Remove horizontal lines
horizontal_kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (15,1))
detect_horizontal = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, horizontal_kernel, iterations=2)
cnts = cv2.findContours(detect_horizontal, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
for c in cnts:
    cv2.drawContours(clean, [c], -1, 0, 3)

# Remove vertical lines
vertical_kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (1,30))
detect_vertical = cv2.morphologyEx(thresh, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, vertical_kernel, iterations=2)
cnts = cv2.findContours(detect_vertical, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
for c in cnts:
    cv2.drawContours(clean, [c], -1, 0, 3)

cnts = cv2.findContours(clean, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
for c in cnts:
    # Remove diagonal lines
    area = cv2.contourArea(c)
    if area < 100:
        cv2.drawContours(clean, [c], -1, 0, 3)
    # Remove circle objects
    elif area > 1000:
        cv2.drawContours(clean, [c], -1, 0, -1)
    # Remove curve stuff
    peri = cv2.arcLength(c, True)
    approx = cv2.approxPolyDP(c, 0.02 * peri, True)
    x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(c)
    if len(approx) == 4:
        cv2.rectangle(clean, (x, y), (x + w, y + h), 0, -1)

open_kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (2,2))
opening = cv2.morphologyEx(clean, cv2.MORPH_OPEN, open_kernel, iterations=2)
close_kernel = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, (3,2))
close = cv2.morphologyEx(opening, cv2.MORPH_CLOSE, close_kernel, iterations=4)
cnts = cv2.findContours(close, cv2.RETR_EXTERNAL, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
cnts = cnts[0] if len(cnts) == 2 else cnts[1]
for c in cnts:
    x,y,w,h = cv2.boundingRect(c)
    area = cv2.contourArea(c)
    if area > 500:
        ROI = image[y:y+h, x:x+w]
        ROI = cv2.GaussianBlur(ROI, (3,3), 0)
        data = pytesseract.image_to_string(ROI, lang='eng',config='--psm 6')
        if data.isalnum():
            cv2.rectangle(image, (x, y), (x + w, y + h), (36,255,12), 2)
            print(data)

cv2.imwrite('image.png', image)
cv2.imwrite('clean.png', clean)
cv2.imwrite('close.png', close)
cv2.imwrite('opening.png', opening)
cv2.waitKey()

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