30. A title extracting apparatus for recognizing and extracting a required partial region from a document image of a document that has been converted into image data, comprising: character region generating means for generating character regions, including black pixel connected regions composed of connected black pixels of the document image; character string region generating means for unifying one or more character regions generated by said character region generating means, and for generating character string regions including one or more character regions; and title extracting means for extracting a table region, including a black pixel connected region having a predetermined size, and extracting a particular character string region from a plurality of character string regions in the table region as a title region, wherein said title extracting means is adapted for dividing a fifth character string region having a ruled line at a position of the ruled line.
32. The title extracting apparatus as set forth in claim 30, wherein said title extracting means is adapted for determining a difference between character regions of the fifth character string region and character regions obtained by said character region generating means for the fifth character string region to be targeted, and dividing the fifth character string region at a position where the difference is detected.