Book label detection

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Hi experts,

given a library setting and a picture of a bookshelf (e.g., something similar to this picture), I want to detect the boundaries of the "library-labels" of the different books. All labels have a white background but their size might differ (as the width of the book varies). So far, I found some related papers (e.g., Combining Image and Text Features: A Hybrid Approach to Mobile Book Spine Recognition). I've also tried various combinations of preprocessing steps and then line / contour detection. While I was able to detect multiple books in some pictures, I have the feeling that because of the fine-tuning of the parameters of the preprocessing operations I "overfitted" it and it might not work with different light settings etc. Currently, I'm experimenting with an approach that is similar to square detection.

Thus, I would like to ask two questions:

• Based on your experience, would a cascade classifier might work in this setting?
• In more general terms, is there an approach which is preferable in this setting?

Thanks and best regards, Christoph