THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL NEWSPAPER SEGMENTATION CONTEST
                      at ICDAR'2001
                            
                http://www.lpa.gr/contest
                            
                 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
                            
                            
The  aim  of  this  contest is to evaluate  all  existing
algorithms  for document image segmentation that  can  be
applied  to  Newspaper page segmentation. Many algorithms
for  page  segmentation  have been  proposed  by  several
research  groups dealing with document image  processing.
However,  many  of  these  algorithms  are  not  directly
applicable  to  newspaper images, which  present  special
problems.   The  most  significant  problems   identified
include   the   complex   layout  of   newspaper   pages,
particularly  the  oldest ones, where  text  columns  are
located  very close to each other in a haphazard way,  as
well  as  the  poor scanning results derived  from  paper
material that was originally of low print quality or  has
deteriorated through time. Another important problem  for
newspaper  page  segmentation is the layout  habits  that
seem to have changed repeatedly.

We  have  selected to evaluate the tracing of  all  basic
entities that appear in most newspaper pages and cover  a
time  period  from the beginning of the previous  century
till  today.  We  selected entities that belong  to  text
regions, lines and images/drawings.

Training and test sets:

Both  training and test sets come from Greek and  English
newspapers.  The  Greek newspapers  are  "TO  VIMA"  (THE
TRIBUNE) and "ELETHERON VIMA" (FREE TRIBUNE) and we  have
selected front pages from years 1922, 1940 and 1968. Both
newspapers  are  published by Lambrakis Press  S.A..  The
English  speaking newspaper is the "International  Herald
Tribune"  and  we  have selected front pages  from  years
1900, 1925 and 1950.

Performance Evaluation:

The  performance evaluation method that will be  used  is
based  on  counting  the number of  matches  between  the
entities  detected by the algorithm and the  entities  in
the  ground truth. We use a global MatchScore  table  for
all entities whose values are calculated according to the
intersection of the ON pixel sets of the result  and  the
ground  truth.  In  order to evaluate  the  detection  of
newspaper page components, we employ a global performance
metric that combines the average values of detection rate
and recognition accuracy.

Participating benefits:

We    will   collect   all   segmentation   results   and
automatically   rank  all  efforts.  The   best   working
algorithms will appear in a report that will be  prepared
by the contest organisers. Authors of the highest ranking
algorithms will be invited to prepare papers that will be
included  at ICDAR 2001 proceedings and presented  in  an
oral session during the conference.

Important dates:

Register Interest & Download Training set:           ASAP
Download Test set:                                   May 1, 2001
E-mail results and algorithm description:            May 14,2001
Results announcement & notification to participants
with best working algorithms to prepare a paper:     May 16,2001
Submission of all papers:                            June 4, 2001
Notification of acceptance:                          June 11, 2001
Camera-ready manuscripts received:                   June 30, 2001

Organizing Committee:

Dr Basilis Gatos
Head of Research
Lambrakis Press Archives
Department of Digital Technologies
8, Heyden Street,
104 34 Athens, Greece
Tel: +30-1-8252680, +30-1-8252540
Fax: +30-1-8250040
E-mail: bgatos@lpa.gr
URL: http://www.lpa.gr

Dr Apostolos Antonacopoulos
Lecturer, Dept. of Computer Science
The University of Liverpool
Chadwick Building, Peach Street
Liverpool, L69 7ZF, U.K.
Tel.: +44 (151) 794 3695
Fax.: +44 (151) 794 3715
E-mail: aa@csc.liv.ac.uk
URL: http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~aa