1. A method for detecting the character cells in an electronic image, the electronic image including representations of glyphic characters, the method comprising: identifying a line of characters in the electronic image; detecting character gaps in the line of characters; creating a histogram of distances for the detected character gaps; constructing a graph according to the detected character gaps; assigning a penalty to arcs of the graph wherein the penalty is based in part on the histogram of distances; and selecting an optimal path in the graph associated with the character cells.