Interpreting and representing tabular documents

This paper describes a methodology to interpret the information from telephone company DSX assignment table drawings. Horizontal lines are found using an efficient algorithm that works over the run-length encoded representation of the image. For vertical lines, the image is transposed using an efficient method we developed, and the algorithm for horizontal lines is applied again. Using the information about the lines, the tabular structures are extracted by finding biconnected components on the graph formed by the lines and their intersections. A methodology has also been developed for the representation of end access to the entries inside the tables.