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Every segment in a parsed document carries a segment_type field naming the layout region it came from. The parser recognizes the types listed below, divided into text elements (regions whose meaning lives in their characters and structure) and visual elements (regions whose meaning lives in their layout, image content, or rendered form). Two of them (KeyValuePair and Signature) are not produced by the default layout model. You get them by passing segmentation_version=v2 — the v2 layout model is form-aware and detects these regions alongside the standard set. All segments share the same core fields: bbox, confidence, content, markdown, html, ocr, and location metadata. What changes by type is what those fields contain, and a couple of types omit specific fields entirely. The sections below show a real response sample for each type.

Text Elements

These segments carry their meaning in text, so the markdown and html fields use semantic markup like headers, italics, list syntax, and footnote references to reflect each type.

Text

Regular paragraph and inline text. The content field carries the plain text, markdown is the same with line breaks preserved, and html wraps any line breaks in <br/>.

Title

Document titles and main headings. Rendered as a top-level Markdown header (#) and <h1> in HTML, distinct from SectionHeader which uses ##/<h2>.

SectionHeader

Section titles and subheadings that define the document’s hierarchy. The parser renders these as ## in markdown and <h2> in html.

ListItem

Bulleted and numbered list entries. The markdown field renders the item with a leading dash, and html wraps the entry in <ul> (with a nested <ol> if the source list was numbered).

Caption

Text captions associated with images, figures, or tables. The markdown field wraps the caption in italics (_..._), and html wraps it in a <span class="caption"> for downstream styling.

Footnote

Footnote text and references. The markdown field uses Markdown footnote syntax ([^...]), and html wraps the body in a <span class="footnote">.
Header content at the top of a page, such as library stamps, document titles repeating across pages, or running headers. The markdown and html fields carry the raw text without semantic markup. Often worth filtering out for clean RAG ingestion.
Footer content at the bottom of a page, typically page numbers, copyright notices, or document IDs. Like PageHeader, often filtered out before embedding.

KeyValuePair

A form field region: labels together with the values filled in against them, such as Passport No : J8369854 or a row of checkboxes. Returned when you pass segmentation_version=v2. A label and its value stay in the same segment rather than being split across neighbouring segments. The markdown field carries the pairs, checkbox and radio state included, and the image field carries a signed URL to the cropped region when you poll with include_url=true.
The html above is what you get with segment_analysis={"KeyValuePair": {"html": "VLM"}}. At the default html: "Auto", the HTML comes back as a single <div class="key-value-pair"> wrapper.

Visual Elements

These segments carry their meaning in visual content or layout. The markdown and html fields contain either rendered structured content (Markdown tables, LaTeX) or AI-generated descriptions for image regions.

Table

Tabular data with structured rows and columns. The markdown field carries the Markdown pipe-table syntax, html carries a full <table> with <thead> and <tbody>, and content is a flat plain-text approximation. The image field, returned when you poll with include_url=true, contains a signed URL to a cropped image of the table region, useful for verifying parses visually or feeding the original table to an image-input model.

Picture

Images, charts, illustrations, and diagrams. The image field, returned when you poll with include_url=true, contains a signed URL to the cropped picture itself. The markdown and html fields contain an AI-generated description of the image (not the image bytes), making the picture’s visual content searchable and embeddable as text alongside the rest of the document. The content field carries any OCR text detected inside the picture region, such as chart labels and axis values, and is omitted when the picture yields no legible text.

Formula

Mathematical equations and expressions. The most distinctive type: the markdown and html fields contain LaTeX wrapped in $...$, ready to render with KaTeX, MathJax, or any other LaTeX-aware tool. The content field carries a plain-text OCR approximation of the equation, which is usually less reliable than the LaTeX representation.

Signature

A handwritten signature region. Returned when you pass segmentation_version=v2. Like Picture, the markdown and html fields contain an AI-generated description of what the handwriting looks like, useful as searchable text, and the content field holds whatever OCR text the region yields, which for cursive strokes is usually nothing, so the field is often omitted. Unlike Picture, a Signature segment never carries an image URL, only the description and bounding box.
For the full segment shape and configuration options, see the Parse API reference.