Restoration of documents with show-through distortion.

Abstract

This thesis addresses the problem of show-through in old manuscripts and documents. After removing the show-through these documents can be stored in the digital libraries and will be accessible by everybody via Internet. The solution to this problem utilizes the image restoration technique. To apply this, the documents are scanned from each side and stored in a digital form. The two sides of document are called recto and verso images. To approach an apposite solution a basic model of the degradation is defined for these two images and then this model is used to eliminate the show-through. The technique for the enhancement is divided into two parts---first, achieving the most precise registration technique and secondly, to compute a method of restoration using the model of degradation. Four different techniques for registration are compared to select the most suitable method for this problem. This comparison brings forth the affine transformation approach to register the image. An approach for the restoration of the registered images is defined to eliminate the show-through from the document and save it in a digital library.