OpenCV Text Detection (EAST text detector) 🔍

A Python application that performs real-time text detection in images and video streams using OpenCV and the EAST text detector model.

📋 Table of Contents

• ✨ Features
• 🔧 Requirements
• 🚀 Installation
• 💻 Usage
• 🔍 How it Works
• 🤝 Contributing
• 📄 License
• 🙏 Acknowledgments

✨ Features

• Real-time text detection in images
• Real-time text detection in video streams and webcam
• Support for multiple text orientations
• Non-maximum suppression for overlapping detections
• Adjustable confidence threshold
• FPS counter for performance monitoring

🔧 Requirements

• Python 3.6+
• OpenCV (cv2)
• NumPy
• imutils
• Pre-trained EAST text detector model

🚀 Installation

1. Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/gifflet/opencv-text-detection.git
cd opencv-text-detection

2. Install the required packages:

pip install opencv-python numpy imutils

3. Download the EAST text detector model (frozen_east_text_detection.pb)

💻 Usage

Image Detection

To detect text in an image:

python text_detection.py --image path/to/image.jpg --east frozen_east_text_detection.pb

Optional arguments:

• --min-confidence: Minimum probability to filter weak detections (default: 0.5)
• --width: Resized image width (should be multiple of 32)
• --height: Resized image height (should be multiple of 32)

Video/Webcam Detection

To detect text in video or webcam:

# For webcam
python text_detection_video.py --east frozen_east_text_detection.pb

# For video file
python text_detection_video.py --east frozen_east_text_detection.pb --video path/to/video.mp4

🔍 How it Works

The application uses the EAST (Efficient and Accurate Scene Text) detector, which is a deep learning model designed for text detection. The process involves:

1. Image preprocessing and resizing
2. Running the EAST detector to get text predictions
3. Decoding the predictions to get bounding box coordinates
4. Applying non-maximum suppression to eliminate overlapping detections
5. Drawing the results on the original image/frame

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

Project based on the original work by Adrian Rosebrock from PyImageSearch (https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2018/08/20/opencv-text-detection-east-text-detector/)

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Made with ❤️ by gifflet