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:
Mar. 31, 1998
Filed:
Mar. 06, 1996
Minolta Co., Ltd., Osaka, JP;
Abstract
An image reading apparatus comprises a photoelectric converter including three linear image sensors of red, green and blue aligned in parallel to each other along a main scan direction. When a document is scanned, a document is read by the photoelectric converter by moving it relative to the document. The moving direction is set to be a first direction, for a prescan and a second direction reverse to the first direction, for a normal scan. Analog output signals of the first to third linear image sensor are converted to digital signals. In a prescan, a selector exchanges the digital signals of the first and third linear image sensors, while in a normal scan, the selector does not exchange them. Then, a line correction section receives the digital signals of the first and third linear image sensors from the selector and the digital signals of the second linear image sensor from the analog-to-digital converter and outputs the digital signals of the first to third linear image sensors by delaying outputs of the digital signals with delay times determined in correspondence to spacial distances between positions of the three linear image sensors and a scan speed along the moving direction. Thus, image data can be read without shifts of output timings of the image data of red, green and blue.