Method and apparatus for form removal from contour compressed image data

Abstract

An apparatus for removing form (background) information from an image for data compression; and for adding the form information during reconstruction of the image. Each object in an image is compressed by contour following of the exterior and interior borders of the object, and encoded in chain link form. Each object in the image as it is compressed is correlated with the appropriate object in the form image by comparing the encoded objects with the already stored encoded objects of the form. If there is a match, the image object which matches the form is deleted from the compressed image. Since the order in which the objects are encountered is known, it is only necessary to correlate each image object with at most a single form object. The correlation includes comparing the starting points of the contour information, the perimeter of the object (the length of its border chain) and the object area. The comparisons are made within a predetermined acceptable tolerance. If the variable image data overlaps some of the form image data, the object is retained in the compressed image. During reconstruction of the image, the form and image data are combined using a technique similar to logical OR operation.