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. 06, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 21, 1999
Yue Ma, West Windsor, NJ (US);
Jinhong Guo, West Windsor, NJ (US);
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Osaka, JP;
Abstract
A method of calculating a skew angle for a two-dimensional barcode, in which the horizontal or vertical edges within the barcode are located, preferably using a finite state recognizer, and an edge array identifying the horizontal or vertical edges is generated. Next, the edge lines within the edge array are identified and traced, and any segments of edge lines within the edge array which are perpendicularly connected are separated. The slope for each edge line within the edge array is calculated, preferably using linear regression techniques. In the preferred embodiment, a discrete histogram of the slopes is generated and the skew angle is then set as the highest value within the discrete histogram. In a preferred embodiment, edge lines within the edge array which are located within a first predetermined threshold of each other are merged with each other and edge lines within the edge array having a length less than a second predetermined threshold are eliminated from the edge array to speed processing. Other techniques for analyzing the edge line slopes are also presented.