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:
Apr. 25, 1995
Filed:
Oct. 22, 1993
Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu, TW;
Abstract
A preprocessing method for smoothing handwritten Chinese characters before subjecting the same to computerized character recognition and/or other applications. The method disclosed in the present invention is a run-based smoothing method which takes advantages of the unique characteristics of the building blocks of Chinese characters, which consist essentially of vertical, horizontal, and tilted strokes. Accordingly, the two-dimensional array of pixels representing a digitized character are first converted into a run information map which will be repeatedly scanned and subject to three main smoothing treatments: (1) empty run filling, (2) small triangular area filling, and (3) filled run deleting. A unique protocol is developed for effectuating each of the smoothing steps. After each treatment, the run information map is updated, and the treatment steps are repeated until no more empty run filling or filled run deleting can be found, or until a specified number of cycles are exceeded. Since an entire run is used during the filling and deleting steps, the method disclosed in the present invention has the advantage that a strong smoothing effect can be achieved. Furthermore, since a run rather than a pixel is used as the checking unit, the processing speed is fast and efficient.