Xerox Corporation

Alexa Internet

Eric W Jaquith

Daniel P Huttenlocher

William James Rucklidge

David Loren Marvit

Brewster P Kahle

Niall O'Driscoll

Ronna C Tanenbaum

Michael G Burner

Z E Smith

Bruce C Gilliat

A method and apparatus that displays metadata about a web page currently being displayed by a browser. While the web browser is communicating with a web server to obtain the requested web page, client software communicates with a database metadata server to obtain metadata about the requested page. After the browser receives its requested information from the web server, it displays the requested web page in a conventional manner. The client concurrently displays its received metadata on the same computer as the web page, and concurrently with the web page. A preferred embodiment of the present invention opens a button bar in conjunction with the web page display. This button bar allows the user to view various portions of the metadata for the displayed web page.

Automatically generate and displaying metadata as supplemental information concurrently with the web page, there being no link between web page and metadata

Fast, low-overhead implementations of a powerful, reliable image matching engine based on the Hausdorff distance are disclosed. In one such implementation, a method is provided in which a processor receives two inputs. The first input is a pattern to be recognized in an image; the second, a digital image in which the pattern is to be recognized. The digital image is preprocessed with the processor using various morphological dilation operations so as to produce a set of preprocessed digital images. Thereafter, the processor performs a hierarchical search for the pattern in the digital image. The hierarchical search is performed over a search space, and includes a series of decisions, each decision indicating whether a portion of the search space can be eliminated from the search. Each decision is made by performing a plurality of comparisons between the pattern and the preprocessed digital images of the set and analyzing the results of these comparisons. Once the search is complete, the processor outputs a search outcome indicating, for example, whether (and where) the pattern has been found in the image. Any application domain wherein images are searched for instances of patterns can benefit from this invention. Document analysis applications provide one such domain.

Fast techniques for searching images using the Hausdorff distance

A method and apparatus for comparing symbols extracted from binary images of text for classifying into equivalence classes. The present invention uses a Hausdorff-like method for comparing symbols for similarity. When a symbol contained in a bitmap A is compared to a symbol contained in a bitmap B, it is determined whether or not the symbol in bitmap B fits within a tolerance into a dilated representation of the symbol in bitmap A with no excessive density of errors and whether the symbol in bitmap A fits within a tolerance into a dilated representation of the symbol in bitmap B with no excessive density of errors. If both tests are passed, an error density check is performed to determine a match. The dilated representation of the bitmap accounts for various quantization errors that may occur along the boundaries of a symbol defined in the respective bitmaps. The dilation utilized preserves the topology of the symbol. The topology preserving dilation is one where symbols are 'thickened' yet the local topology (or connectedness) of the symbol is not changed. Such a dilation is performed by applying a set of local rules to 'off' pixels that are adjacent to 'on' pixels. Quantization effects are also accounted for through the use of a non-linear error allowance. The non-linear error allowance implements the idea that small symbols provide for little or no error, whereas large symbols provide for a proportionately larger amount of error.

Method and apparatus for comparing symbols extracted from binary images

A method for comparing two image sections consisting of a plurality of image signals, or pixels, where each image section represents a token (e.g., character, symbol, glyph, string of components, or similar units of semantic understanding), in order to identify when similar tokens are present within the image sections. The invention further operates without the need for individually detecting and/or identifying the components making up the tokens. In one embodiment, the method relies upon the detection of connected components within words to first isolate individual word tokens and then applies a two stage process where dilated images of the tokens are compared with model representations of the tokens to determine the relative similarity therebetween.

Method for comparing image sections to determine similarity therebetween

A method for determining the boundaries of text or character strings represented in an array of image data by shape, without a requirement for individually detecting and/or identifying the character or characters making up the strings. The method relies upon the detection of connected components within words to first determine text line boundaries and to isolate the connected components into text rows. Subsequently, the structural relationships between the components within and defining rows (i.e. overlap, inter-character spacing, and inter-word spacing), are used to further combine adjacent sets of connected components into words or similar units of semantic understanding within text rows.

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Eric W Jaquith