A table and flowchart detection method is disclosed. First, based on connected component analysis and the sizes of the connected components, a target connected component that corresponds to possible elements of table or flowchart is detected in the input image. The target connected component is broken into corners and edges that connect the corners. Based on the relationship between the corners and edges, it is determined whether the target connected component is a table or a flowchart. For table detection, the edges and corners are linked into horizontal sets and vertical sets, and based on corner counts in the horizontal sets and vertical sets, it is determined whether the target connected component is a table. For flowchart detection, the boundary boxes and connecting lines between boundary boxes are detected to determine whether the target connected component is a flowchart.