Within HisDoc 2.0 we have developed DIVA-HisDB a precisely annotated large dataset of challenging medieval manuscripts for the evaluation of several Document Image Analysis (DIA) tasks such as layout analysis, text line segmentation, binarization and writer identification. The database consists of 150 annotated pages of three different medieval manuscripts with challenging layouts.

DIVA-HisDB is a collection of three medieval manuscripts that have been chosen regarding the complexity of their layout [1], together with partners from e-codices and the Humanities faculty in the University of Fribourg:

1. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 18, codicological unit 4 (CSG18),
2. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 863 (CSG863),
3. Cologny-Geneve, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 55 (CB55).

And their corresponding GT visualization of the three annotation categories (main text body, comments, decorations):

DIVA-HisDB consists of 150 pages in total, 50 pages from each manuscript. For the dataset, as well as for the division into training, validation, and test set we have selected a representative set of pages.