speech balloon image segmentation

A tensorflow/keras convolutional neural network model for speech balloon segmentation in comics.

For details see Dubray and Laubrock (arXiv preprint), Deep CNN-based Speech Balloon Detection and Segmentation for Comic Books.

The model was trained and compiled on Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS with tensorflow 1.12.

if you use the model, please cite:

@ARTICLE{2019arXiv190208137D,
	   author = {{Dubray}, David and {Laubrock}, Jochen},
		title = "{Deep CNN-based Speech Balloon Detection and Segmentation for Comic Books}",
	  journal = {arXiv e-prints},
	 keywords = {Computer Science - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Computer Science - Machine Learning},
		 year = "2019",
		month = "Feb",
		  eid = {arXiv:1902.08137},
		pages = {arXiv:1902.08137},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
	   eprint = {1902.08137},
 primaryClass = {cs.CV}
}