Sudoku Solver – A Novel Approach Using Recognition of Printed Text Image

Detecting and analyzing text in multimedia is required for recognition of characters which can be used for performing multi-objectives in numerous research areas and applications. Characters or numbers in images can be hand-written, printed document, typewritten or artificially added for the purpose of searching or indexing, editing or image understanding. Various applications such as License Plate Detection, Handwritten documents recognition, Sudoku Solving, multi-oriented recognition focuses on character recognition. Image Sudoku solver works on Sudoku puzzle images. In this paper, the printed text Sudoku image is used as the input. The image is enhanced by filling the horizontal and vertical gaps in the grids that may occur due to shadow or distortion of the scanned image such that all the 81 grids are extracted. Secondly, the numbers and grids in the enhanced image are extracted and a dancing link approach using Algorithm X is adopted to solve the Sudoku. The proposed work is compared with a backtracking approach and dancing link approach without enhancing the image and its computation time for various ranks of difficulty of a puzzle taken. The Sudoku puzzle can be used to secure information stored in an image as the number of solutions to solve a Sudoku puzzle is very large, allowing it to be used as a security tool resistant to brute force attacks.