US Patent 7428700 Vision-based document segmentation

Vision-based document segmentation identifies one or more portions of semantic content of a document. The one or more portions are identified by identifying a plurality of visual blocks in the document, and detecting one or more separators between the visual blocks of the plurality of visual blocks. A content structure for the document is constructed based at least in part on the plurality of visual blocks and the one or more separators, and the content structure identifies the one or more portions of semantic content of the document. The content structure obtained using the vision-based document segmentation can optionally be used during document retrieval.