How to find table like structure in image

Vaibhav is right. You can experiment with the different morphological transforms to extract or group pixels into different shapes, lines, etc. For example, the approach can be the following:

1. Start from the Dilation to convert the text into the solid spots.
2. Then apply the findContours function as a next step to find text
   bounding boxes.
3. After having the text bounding boxes it is possible to apply some
   heuristics algorithm to cluster the text boxes into groups by their
   coordinates. This way you can find a groups of text areas aligned
   into rows and columns.
4. Then you can apply sorting by x and y coordinates and/or some
   analysis to the groups to try to find if the grouped text boxes can
   form a table.

I wrote a small sample illustrating the idea. I hope the code is self explanatory. I’ve put some comments there too.

import os
import cv2
import imutils

# This only works if there's only one table on a page
# Important parameters:
#  - morph_size
#  - min_text_height_limit
#  - max_text_height_limit
#  - cell_threshold
#  - min_columns


def pre_process_image(img, save_in_file, morph_size=(8, 8)):

    # get rid of the color
    pre = cv2.cvtColor(img, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
    # Otsu threshold
    pre = cv2.threshold(pre, 250, 255, cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
    # dilate the text to make it solid spot
    cpy = pre.copy()
    struct = cv2.getStructuringElement(cv2.MORPH_RECT, morph_size)
    cpy = cv2.dilate(~cpy, struct, anchor=(-1, -1), iterations=1)
    pre = ~cpy

    if save_in_file is not None:
        cv2.imwrite(save_in_file, pre)
    return pre


def find_text_boxes(pre, min_text_height_limit=6, max_text_height_limit=40):
    # Looking for the text spots contours
    # OpenCV 3
    # img, contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(pre, cv2.RETR_LIST, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)
    # OpenCV 4
    contours, hierarchy = cv2.findContours(pre, cv2.RETR_LIST, cv2.CHAIN_APPROX_SIMPLE)

    # Getting the texts bounding boxes based on the text size assumptions
    boxes = []
    for contour in contours:
        box = cv2.boundingRect(contour)
        h = box[3]

        if min_text_height_limit < h < max_text_height_limit:
            boxes.append(box)

    return boxes


def find_table_in_boxes(boxes, cell_threshold=10, min_columns=2):
    rows = {}
    cols = {}

    # Clustering the bounding boxes by their positions
    for box in boxes:
        (x, y, w, h) = box
        col_key = x // cell_threshold
        row_key = y // cell_threshold
        cols[row_key] = [box] if col_key not in cols else cols[col_key] + [box]
        rows[row_key] = [box] if row_key not in rows else rows[row_key] + [box]

    # Filtering out the clusters having less than 2 cols
    table_cells = list(filter(lambda r: len(r) >= min_columns, rows.values()))
    # Sorting the row cells by x coord
    table_cells = [list(sorted(tb)) for tb in table_cells]
    # Sorting rows by the y coord
    table_cells = list(sorted(table_cells, key=lambda r: r[0][1]))

    return table_cells


def build_lines(table_cells):
    if table_cells is None or len(table_cells) <= 0:
        return [], []

    max_last_col_width_row = max(table_cells, key=lambda b: b[-1][2])
    max_x = max_last_col_width_row[-1][0] + max_last_col_width_row[-1][2]

    max_last_row_height_box = max(table_cells[-1], key=lambda b: b[3])
    max_y = max_last_row_height_box[1] + max_last_row_height_box[3]

    hor_lines = []
    ver_lines = []

    for box in table_cells:
        x = box[0][0]
        y = box[0][1]
        hor_lines.append((x, y, max_x, y))

    for box in table_cells[0]:
        x = box[0]
        y = box[1]
        ver_lines.append((x, y, x, max_y))

    (x, y, w, h) = table_cells[0][-1]
    ver_lines.append((max_x, y, max_x, max_y))
    (x, y, w, h) = table_cells[0][0]
    hor_lines.append((x, max_y, max_x, max_y))

    return hor_lines, ver_lines


if __name__ == "__main__":
    in_file = os.path.join("data", "page.jpg")
    pre_file = os.path.join("data", "pre.png")
    out_file = os.path.join("data", "out.png")

    img = cv2.imread(os.path.join(in_file))

    pre_processed = pre_process_image(img, pre_file)
    text_boxes = find_text_boxes(pre_processed)
    cells = find_table_in_boxes(text_boxes)
    hor_lines, ver_lines = build_lines(cells)

    # Visualize the result
    vis = img.copy()

    # for box in text_boxes:
    #     (x, y, w, h) = box
    #     cv2.rectangle(vis, (x, y), (x + w - 2, y + h - 2), (0, 255, 0), 1)

    for line in hor_lines:
        [x1, y1, x2, y2] = line
        cv2.line(vis, (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (0, 0, 255), 1)

    for line in ver_lines:
        [x1, y1, x2, y2] = line
        cv2.line(vis, (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (0, 0, 255), 1)

    cv2.imwrite(out_file, vis)

I’ve got the following output:

Of course to make the algorithm more robust and applicable to a variety of different input images it has to be adjusted correspondingly.

Update: Updated the code with respect to the OpenCV API changes for findContours. If you have older version of OpenCV installed – use the corresponding call. Related post.