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DIBCO 2011 - Document Image Binarization Contest in conjunction with
the 11th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition
(ICDAR'11), September 18-21, 2011, Beijing, China.  http://utopia.duth.gr/~ipratika/DIBCO2011/
 
Document image binarization is an important step in the document image
analysis and recognition pipeline. Therefore, it is imperative to have
a benchmarking dataset along with an objective evaluation methodology
in order to capture the efficiency of current document image
binarization practices. Following the success of DIBCO 2009 organized
in conjunction with ICDAR’09 as well as of H-DIBCO 2010 organized
in conjunction with ICFHR 2010, the follow-up of these contests in the
framework of ICDAR 2011 is organized. The general objective of DIBCO
2011 is to record recent advances in document image binarization using
established evaluation performance measures and a benchmarking dataset
that is representative of the potential challenges met in the
binarization process.

The DIBCO 2011 dataset will contain images that range from gray scale
to color and from machine printed to handwritten. For the preparation
of the participants using the new dataset, the existing publicly
available datasets of previous contests (DIBCO 2009 and H-DIBCO 2010)
along with the corresponding ground truth could be used.

We invite all researchers in the field of Document Image Binarization
to register for participating in DIBCO 2011. An agreement will be
signed by the participants and the organizers in order to protect the
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the submitted software. The
description of the methods and the evaluation scores will be presented
during a dedicated ICDAR 2011 session. A report on the competition
will be published in the ICDAR 2011 conference proceedings.

Note: You may participate in this contest even if you do not plan to attend the ICDAR 2011 conference.
Important Dates

Registration is open due to 20/5/2011 (EXTENDED DATE)
Submission of executable due to 23/5/2011 (EXTENDED DATE)

The DIBCO 2011 Organizing Committee

I. Pratikakis1, B. Gatos2 and K. Ntirogiannis2

1Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

2National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Greece