Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Toshihiro Kanata

Yasushi Adachi

Makoto Otsu

Yuri Nakayama

The present invention is directed to the provision of an image processing apparatus which enables the characteristic of an image region to be discriminated accurately, even in the presence of pixel displacements, noise, etc. Within masks for three colors, each mask consisting of m&times;n pixel including an object pixel, sub-region masks of u&times;v are set, and the sum of pixel densities is calculated by a sum calculation circuit. Based on the thus calculated sum, a parameter calculation circuit calculates a parameter based on which a multi-valued signal generation circuit generates a multi-valued signal. A characteristic signal represented by multi-valued data is generated by a characteristic signal generation circuit from the distribution of data within a region discriminating mask represented by the multi-valued signal, and a segmentation signal representing the result of region characteristic discrimination is output from a segmentation signal generation circuit.

Image processing apparatus

An area-separation processing section, installed in an image-processing apparatus of the present invention, is provided with a block memory A for storing image signals, a maximum/minimum pixel detection section, a maximum/minimum pixel feature-amount calculation section and a maximum/minimum pixel classifying section that make a judgment as to what kind of maximum pixel or minimum pixel a target pixel A within the block memory A forms, a block memory B for storing classifying signals outputted from the maximum/minimum pixel classifying section, and a mesh feature-amount calculation section and a mesh judgment section that make a judgment as to whether or not a target pixel B within the block memory B belongs to a mesh area

Image-processing apparatus

An edge detection/color determination portion detects edges using a Sobel filter and makes color determination, to output a black edge judgment signal. A characteristic quantity calculation/judgment portion calculates characteristic quantities inside a mask including an observed pixel and judges based on the result whether the observed pixel is of a character edge, to thereby output a character edge judgment signal. An AND circuit produces a logical product between the two signals and outputs it as a black character edge judgment signal. Further, an emphasis setup judgment portion judges whether the emphasis process will produce white voids and contours around characters and outputs the judgment as an emphasis setup judgment signal.

Image processing method and image processing apparatus including replacing color image input data with achromatic color data

An image processing apparatus includes: a parameter computing means which computes the maximum density value, the summation of density differences, the average density and the maximum density difference for each pixel in a mask containing a target pixel; and a color determination counting circuit which makes appropriate, selective threshold comparisons based on the computed result from the parameter computing circuit to determine an area in a mask as being chromatic, achromatic or 'the other' area.

The present invention is an image processing apparatus comprising: dividing means for dividing an image signal obtained by scanning an original document into predetermined local blocks and output a predetermined including a target pixel; a binary coding processing section which converts the image signal in the predetermined block into binary code information; means for calculating each area (dimension) of the binary values; means for calculating number of times that the binary values are changed; a threshold processing section for performing threshold processing by properly and selectively using a threshold of the maximum density difference in the predetermined area, each area (dimension) value after binary coding and number of counts as a parameter; and a judgement processing section for judging the image signal in the predetermined area.

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Nara, Japan

Toshihiro Kanata