Résumés
This paper evaluates three commercial Arabic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems: Sakhr Automatic Reader (AR) version 11.2 gold; Abbyy FineReader (FR) version 12; and NovoVerus (NV) version 4.2.0 for the digitization of press archives having degraded text quality. In contrast to other similar attempts, we developed our own dataset to study the best specifications and tools in order to realize highest accuracy in the Egyptian press archive project of the Centre d'Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales (CEDEJ). We describe the approach of developing the dataset, as well as the effect of different image specifications on the OCR accuracy. Our dataset consists of 30 press-clips that represent different qualities, in terms of image background, text size and other effects due to age and storage. Each sample was scanned in different resolutions and color modes, to produce a set of 180 samples (six versions of each press-clip), then fed to the OCR suites, to evaluate its recognition accuracy. Then, we replicated the procedure that produced the highest consistent OCR accuracy on more than one million press-clips, the corpus of the CEDEJ project, and evaluated its results. In this paper, we mainly introduce an approach to digitize and OCR documents having low quality Arabic textual content, which guarantees high and consistent accuracy. Our approach is based on evaluating OCR suites performance against different image capturing and manipulation specifications.
Cet article évalue trois systèmes commerciaux de reconnaissance optique de caractères (OCR) pour la numérisation des archives de presse : Sakhr Automatic Reader (AR) version 11.2 gold; Abbyy FineReader (FR) version 12 ; et NovoVerus (NV) version 4.2.0 dans un contexte de dégradation de la qualité du texte. Contrairement à d'autres tentatives similaires, nous avons développé notre propre ensemble de données pour étudier les meilleures spécifications et outils afin de réaliser la plus grande précision dans le projet d'archives de presse égyptiennes du Centre d'Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales (CEDEJ). Nous décrivons l'approche du développement de l'ensemble de données, ainsi que l'effet des différentes spécifications des images, sur la précision de l'OCR. Notre jeu de données se compose de 30 extraits de presse qui représentent différentes qualités, en termes de fond d'image, de taille de texte et d'autres effets dus à l'âge et au stockage des documents papier. Chaque échantillon a été scanné dans différentes résolutions et modes de couleur, pour produire un ensemble de 180 échantillons (six versions de chaque extrait), puis transmis aux logiciels d’OCR pour évaluer leur précision de reconnaissance. Le résultat de l'expérience a ensuite été appliqué à plus d'un million d’extraits, le corpus du projet CEDEJ, et a donné des résultats cohérents. Dans cet article, nous présentons principalement une approche de la numérisation et de l'OCR de documents ayant un contenu textuel arabe de faible qualité, ce qui garantit une précision élevée et constante. Notre approche est basée sur l'évaluation des performances des logiciels OCR par rapport à différentes spécifications de capture et de manipulation d'images.
تتناول هذه الورقة تقييم ثلاثة نُظم تجارية للتعرُّف الضوئي على الحروف العربية تُستخدم في رقمنة محفوظات الصحافة؛ وهي: نظام «القارئ الآلي من شركة صخر» Sakhr Automatic Reader (AR) (إصدار ١١-٢ الذهبي)؛ ونظام «فاين ريدر» من شركة آبي Abbyy FineReader (FR) (إصدار ١٢)؛ ونظام «نوفوفيرس» NovoVerus (NV) (إصدار٤-٢-٠) في حالة ما إذا كانت حالة النص الأصلي متدهورة. وعلى عكس المحاولات الأخرى المماثلة، فقد وضعنا مجموعة بيانات خاصة بنا لدراسة أفضل المواصفات والأدوات لتحقيق أعلى مستوى من الدقة في مشروع «أرشيف الصحافة المصرية» في «مركز الدراسات والوثائق الاقتصادية والقانونية والاجتماعية» (سيداج). وتشرح الورقة المنهج الذي اتُبع في إعداد مجموعة البيانات، وكذلك مدى تأثير المواصفات المختلفة للصورة على دقة التعرُّف الضوئي على الحروف. وتتكون مجموعة البيانات لدينا من ٣٠ مقتطفاً من الصحف تمثل خواص متباينة، من حيث خلفية الصورة وحجم النص وغير ذلك من الخواص المؤثرة التي ترجع إلى مدى قِدم المقتطف وطريقة تخزينه. وقد تم إجراء مسح ضوئي (scanning) لكل مقتطف بدرجات مختلفة من الدقة وأنماط لونية مختلفة، وذلك بغرض الحصول على ١٨٠ عينة (ست نسخ مختلفة لكل مقتطف من الصحف)، ثم إخضاعها لنُظم التعرُّف الضوئي على الحروف، من أجل تقييم مدى الدقة في التعرُّف عليها. وبعد ذلك، طُبِّقت النتائج التجريبية على أكثر من مليون مقتطف من الصحف، موجودة في مجموعة مشروع «مركز الدراسات والوثائق الاقتصادية والقانونية والاجتماعية»، وأسفر هذا التطبيق عن نتائج متَّسقة. وفي هذه الورقة، نعرض بالأساس منهجاً يتيح رقمنة الوثائق التي تضم محتوىً نصياً متدني الجودة باللغة العربية، كما يتيح التعرُّف الضوئي عليها. ويستند المنهج الذي نقدمه إلى تقييمٍ لأداء نُظم التعرُّف الضوئي على الحروف، بتطبيقها على صور متباينة من حيث أنماط التقاطها ومواصفات معالجتها.
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Consulter cet article
Plan
Introduction
The project workflow
Management and tracking
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as a challenge
Arabic script characteristics
Egyptian press archive of CEDEJ project
Online Arabic Press Archive Attempts
Evaluation of Arabic OCR Systems Attempts
The CEDEJ dataset
Interoperability as a challenge
Conclusion
Aperçu du début du texte
Introduction
The CEDEJ was born in 1968 from a desire to preserve the library of the French Law School in Cairo. The political scientist Jean-Claude Vatin initiated this press archive in 1970. In 2007, after the closure of the CEDEJ library, the collection of press clippings was stored in the French Consulate in Alexandria. Two years later, a framework agreement for scientific cooperation was signed between the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) to set up an online system for documentary research from the CEDEJ archives. A tripartite partnership agreement was signed in 2012 (renewed in 2016 and 2019) between the CNRS, the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE) and the BA. The latter agreement worked indeed towards the creation of two web-based research platforms common to the CEDEJ and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to promote the corpus of press clippings of the CEDEJ (2015) and a corpus of 12,000 press cartoons (2018).
The ...
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Référence électronique
Rami Khalil Rouchdi, Mohamed Ahmed Ellotf et Hala Bayoumi, « Egyptian press archive of CEDEJ. A challenging case study of Arabic OCR », Égypte/Monde arabe,Troisième série, 22 | 2020, mis en ligne le 03 janvier 2023, consulté le 21 janvier 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ema/13156 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ema.13156
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Auteurs
B.Sc. of Computer Engineering, 1997 from Arab Academy for Science and Technology. He has been working for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) since 2002 in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) department. Since 2005, he was involved in the field of digitization with special focus on Arabic text. He oversaw the Digitization Laboratory Unit since 2005 till 2011, then was assigned to lead the digitization operations Section to date. He follows and investigates about the state of art techniques to digitize different types of Arabic textual documents. He cooperated in many large-scale national and international digitization projects at the BA. To share the BA expertise, he is responsible of organizing trainings about the digitization of Arabic contents for organizations, among which Yale University, AUB, BRILL publishing house and Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR). Recently he developed a mass production workflow that integrates the digitization technologies of Arabic text to produce electronic Arabic books in ePub format suitable for smart phones.
He has got a B.Sc. of Computer Engineering, 2003 from Alexandria University and a MBA, 2016 from Arab Academy for Science, Technology (AAST). He started his tenure at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) in 2003 as a system administrator then served in several managerial positions within the ICT sector until he occupied his current position as Director of the ICT Infrastructure & Operations Department in October 2016. He is responsible for leading, developing and maintaining the library ICT infrastructure interoperability and operations management thus contributing to the fulfillment of main objectives of the BA as a Library in the digital age. His responsibilities encompass directing system acquisition, installations, server management, system support and maintenance, managing network and communication systems, voice, data and office automation. He also participated in several endeavors pursued by the BA such as the technical infrastructure implementation of the Encyclopedia of Life project and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research digitization system.
Dr Hala Bayoumi is a research engineer at the CNRS France (National Centre for Scientific Research) and head of the Digital Humanities cluster at the CEDEJ. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from EPHE (Paris, France) and a habilitation in Geography from University Jean Moulin (Lyon, France). She is the winner of the CNRS 2017 crystal medal, and ambassador of the program “La Science taille Xxelle”. She published different books and websites and co-edited recently with Karine Bennafla Atlas de l’Égypte Contemporaine, 2020. She coordinated since 2010 a Master’s level diploma in Data Analysis and Spatial Analysis Techniques (GIS 4D) for Egyptian officials from CAPMAS (inter-university diploma EPHE-university of Lyon).
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