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:
May. 01, 2001
Filed:
Mar. 18, 1998
Ramin Zabih, Itaca, NY (US);
Ramin Halviatti, Kirkland, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
An invention for quantitatively analyzing bitmap images using computer vision is disclosed. In one embodiment, these bitmap images correspond to the rendered screens of two applications based on a same data source file. An optional preprocessing step filters non-important information for analyzing purposes such as the background, replaces each image with a blank image of the same size, and modifies non-visible attributes of a screen so their structure can be recovered during the computer vision processing. After a series of rendered screens of each application are captured, these bitmap images are interpreted using computer vision techniques to produce machine-readable visual attributes of the rendered screens. Corresponding attributes from each of the two applications are then compared to generate a set of differences, where those differences within a predefined set of deliberate design differences are ignored. These attributes and differences are then processed to derive a set of grades reflecting the similarities between the rendered screens of the two applications. In determining these grades, a set of user-definable thresholds are used to overlook small variances inherent in the rendering by the different applications.