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:
Jan. 10, 1995
Filed:
Aug. 11, 1992
Seido Kawanaka, Osaka, JP;
Shiro Ida, Osaka, JP;
Hideo Takemura, Osaka, JP;
Kouji Kumetani, Osaka, JP;
Sharp Corporation, Osaka, JP;
Ezel Inc., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
The present invention relates to a method for discriminating between figure areas, e.g., half-tone photographs, drawings and the like, and text areas in an image. More specifically, an image is processed to determine the difference between maximum and minimum brightnesses in convolutions thereof. When the difference between the maximum and minimum brightnesses is less than or equal to a predetermined level, the center pixel in the convolution is determined to be a half-tone pixel. A half-tone area is detected by determining areas of the image having at least a predetermined number of half-tone pixels. In another aspect of the invention, contiguous areas of the image having fewer than a predetermined number of configuration pixels are determined to be vacant areas having neither figure nor character information.