22. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 21 wherein processing the image to form the output image and processing the image to create the at least one binary chip comprises the computer program product performing: converting the image to a gray-level version of the image to form a gray-level image; filtering and thresholding the gray-level image to emphasize bar-like and line-like regions which potentially correspond to text to form a first image; removing long straight lines and rectangles from the first image to form a second image; identifying potential text regions in the second image based on predefined character constraints to form a third image; removing the potential text regions from the third image which are not consistent with words to create a fourth image; creating the output image and at least one gray-level image chip from the fourth image; and processing each of the at least one gray-level image chips to form the at least one binary chip.
22. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 21 wherein processing the image to form the output image and processing the image to create the at least one binary chip comprises the computer program product performing: converting the image to a gray-level version of the image to form a gray-level image; filtering and thresholding the gray-level image to emphasize bar-like and line-like regions which potentially correspond to text to form a first image; removing long straight lines and rectangles from the first image to form a second image; identifying potential text regions in the second image based on predefined character constraints to form a third image; removing the potential text regions from the third image which are not consistent with words to create a fourth image; creating the output image and at least one gray-level image chip from the fourth image; and processing each of the at least one gray-level image chips to form the at least one binary chip. 23. The non-transitory computer program product of claim 22 , wherein filtering and thresholding the gray-level image comprises the computer program product performing: filtering the gray-level image using a Laplacian-of-Gaussian filter to emphasize bar-like and line-like regions which potentially correspond to the text present in the gray-level image; and thresholding the filtered gray-level image using an algorithm selected from an adaptive thresholding algorithm and a constant thresholding algorithm to form the first image.