In this paper, a novel script identification method based on basic image features (BIF) is proposed to resolve the conflict between the speed of feature extraction and accuracy of identification. According to the concept of structural approach to texture analysis, texture basic units are divided into seven types. Support vector machine (SVM) is used to train and classify the features, which describe the structure and distribution of texture basic units, to identify scripts in different languages. Experiments have been performed upon degraded document images including ten languages including Chinese, Russian, English, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, etc. Experimental results confirm that the proposed method can identify scripts accurately and efficiently. It is robust against image degradation.
