Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Eiji Kitsutaka

Takefusa Ogata

Jun Hasegawa

Junichiro Honda

The invention provides an image reading apparatus structured such that two or more line image sensors are arranged in a main scanning direction, in which it is possible to securely restrict a position shift of an image reading area caused by a line image sensor, thereby performing an image reading operation at a high quality. In the image reading apparatus in which the line image sensors are arranged, a marker is formed as an image in an overlapping portion of the line image sensors, the marker is read by the line image sensors themselves so as to inspect a relative position between the line image sensors and the marker with reference to a magnitude of an output thereof corresponding to a judging standard, and the positions of the line image sensors are shifted on the basis of the result, thereby preventing a position shift in a sub scanning direction from being generated.

Method of adjusting image reading position, method of reading image and image reading apparatus

Four photo-sensor blocks, for instance, are arrayed in series in a main scan direction within a sensor unit. In each photo-sensor block, 1280 photo sensors, for instance, are arrayed linearly. The adjacent photo-sensor blocks are placed so that they read image data in reverse directions with each other. The read-out image data are once stored in a buffer, and re-arrayed in the order corresponding to the main scan direction of the document before the data are read out from the buffer.

Image reading apparatus

An image reading apparatus for approximately obtaining an image signal which might have been obtained if scanned in a second direction using an image signal obtained by scanning in a first direction. The image apparatus includes a conveyer for conveying a document, a detector for detecting the inclination of the conveyed document, and a window generator for generating a window signal. Also included is an image reader for reading an image by scanning the document in a first direction at a width broader than the width of the document and reading the scanned image only when the window signal is present to produce an issuing image signal. Also included is a first corrector for adjusting the start timing of the window signal so that the window signal may be started when the scanning passes through the beginning end of the document by reference to the inclination angle of the document. Also included is a second corrector for dividing the image signal of each sweep for the first direction after the first correction into a plurality of image signal blocks linking a plurality of the image signal blocks and approximate image signal which might have been obtained if scanned in the second direction.

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Fukuoka, Japan

Eiji Kitsutaka