NLP group

On self-supervision in historical handwritten document segmentation

Josef Baloun and Martin Prantl and Ladislav Lenc and Jiří Martínek and Pavel Král
International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR) (2025)

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Abstract

Historical document analysis plays a crucial role in understanding and preserving our past. However, this task is often hindered by challenges such as limited annotated training data and the diverse nature of historical handwritten documents. In this paper, we explore the potential of self-supervised learning (SSL) in historical document analysis, with a particular focus on historical handwritten document segmentation, to overcome the need for extensive annotated data while enhancing efficiency and robustness. We present an overview of SSL methods suitable for historical document analysis and discuss their potential applications and benefits. Furthermore, we present an approach for SSL in the document domain, considering various setups, augmentations, and resolutions. We also provide experimental results that demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness. Our findings indicate that most document segmentation tasks can be effectively addressed using SSL features, highlighting the potential of SSL to advance historical document analysis and pave the way for more efficient and robust document processing workflows.