Abstract
Bank check processing is an important application of document analysis as checks are one of the most widespread documents. In this paper we propose an efficient and effective top-down Arabic check analysis and zone extraction technique for courtesy amount, legal amount, and the date fields. Our technique uses available information and performs adaptive local processing using projections and connected component analysis. We tested our technique on real Arabic check images of CENPARMI Arabic check database. The result outperforms previous published results of zone extraction on this dataset.