Intelligent Processing of Historical Document Images: Data, Methods, and Challenges

Chinese historical documents embody the accumulated knowledge of Chinese civilization over several millennia, and their digital preservation and intelligent utilization have become urgent tasks in cultural heritage conservation. This article systematically reviews recent progress in the intelligent processing of Chinese historical document images, with a focus on three representative research directions: dataset construction, image enhancement and restoration, and character recognition with intelligent understanding. It also summarizes major challenges such as data scarcity, cross-domain generalization, evaluation standards, and output reliability, and discusses possible future directions and trends in technological development.