The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 04, 1988
Filed:
May. 21, 1987
Shin Katoh, Ohohashi, JP;
Hiroyasu Takahashi, Yokohama, JP;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A system and method for electronically segmenting character components on character-containing documents involving first scanning a document and quantizing the image information obtained by the scanning into two levels, e.g., black and white, by 1 and 0 bits, and from the quantized information, m-bit OR groups are generated by sequentially ORing every m-th bit in a first direction of the quantized image, where m is an integer equal to or greater than two. The black (character) bits in each of the m-bit OR groups are counted and processed using the steps of: sequentially calculating sums of n consecutive count values by shifting one by one the count values obtained by the counting along a second direction perpendicular to the first direction; and then, segmenting character components by comparing the sums with a predetermined threshold value. The ORing operations can be performed conveniently by employing the OR instruction provided in a typical microprocessor and can attain substantially the same accuracy as conventional OCR systems employing an m.times.n mask.