Staff line detection and removal with stable paths

Artur Capela, Ana Rebelo, Jaime S. Cardoso, Carlos Guedes

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Many music works produced in the past are currently available only as original manuscripts or as photocopies. Preserving them entails their digitalization and consequent accessibility in a machine-readable format, which encourages browsing, retrieval, search and analysis while providing a generalized access to the digital material. Carrying this task manually is very time consuming and error prone. While optical music recognition (OMR) systems usually perform well on printed scores, the processing of handwritten music by computers remains below the expectations. One of the fundamental stages to carry out this task is the detection and subsequent removal of staff lines. In this paper we integrate a general-purpose, knowledge-free method for the automatic detection of staff lines based on stable paths, into a recently developed staff line removal toolkit. Lines affected by curvature, discontinuities, and inclination are robustly detected. We have also developed a staff removal algorithm adapting an existing line removal approach to use the stable path algorithm at the detection stage. Experimental results show that the proposed technique outperforms well-established algorithms. The developed algorithm will now be integrated in a web based system providing seamless access to browsing, retrieval, search and analysis of submitted scores.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSIGMAP 2008 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications
Pages263-270
Number of pages8
StatePublished - 2008
EventSIGMAP 2008 - International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications - Porto, Portugal
Duration: Jul 26 2008Jul 29 2008

Publication series

NameSIGMAP 2008 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications

Other

OtherSIGMAP 2008 - International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityPorto
Period7/26/087/29/08

Keywords

  • Document image processing
  • Image analysis
  • Music
  • Optical character recognition

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Signal Processing

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