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:
Sep. 03, 2002
Filed:
Sep. 30, 1998
Mark Peairs, Menlo Park, CA (US);
Ricoh Co., Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A method and apparatus for document matching using structural information. The present invention provides a method and apparatus for identifying documents based on the visual structure of the document. Structural information describing a document is generated and used to search for matching stored documents. In one embodiment, images are converted to a point set and the point sets are compared. For example, an image of a document that is sought is converted to a point set and the point set is compared to point sets corresponding to stored documents. When point sets match within a predetermined tolerance, the documents match. In one embodiment, the Hausdorff measure is used to compare point sets.