Combining Forces to Reconstruct Strip Shredded Text Documents

Authors:
Matthias Prandtstetter;Günther R. Raidl
Affiliations:
Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria;Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
Venue:
HM '08 Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics
Year:
2008

Citing 3
Cited 3

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Abstract

In this work, we focus on the reconstruction of strip shredded text documents(RSSTD) which is of great interest in investigative sciences and forensics. After presenting a formal model for RSSTD, we suggest two solution approaches: On the one hand, RSSTD can be reformulated as a (standard) traveling salesman problem and solved by well-known algorithms such as the chained Lin Kernighan heuristic. On the other hand, we present a specific variable neighborhood search approach. Both methods are able to outperform a previous algorithm from literature, but nevertheless have practical limits due to the necessarily imperfect objective function. We therefore turn to a semi-automatic system which also integrates user interactions in the optimization process. Practical results of this hybrid approach are excellent; difficult instances can be quickly resolved with only few user interactions.