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:
Dec. 06, 2011
Filed:
Sep. 08, 2008
Hitoshi Hirohata, Hashimoto, JP;
Hitoshi Hirohata, Hashimoto, JP;
Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha, Osaka, JP;
Abstract
In an image matching apparatus of the present invention, only a connected region in which the number of pixels included therein exceeds a threshold value, among connected regions that are specified by a labeling process section, is sent to a centroid calculation process section from a threshold value processing section, and a centroid (feature point) of the connected region is calculated. When it is determined that a target document to be matched is an N-up document, the threshold value processing section uses, instead of a default threshold value, a variant threshold value that varies depending on the number of images laid out on the N-up document and a document size that are found and detected by an N-up document determination section and a document size detection section. This makes it possible to determine a similarity to a reference document with high accuracy even in a case of an N-up document, i.e., a case where each target image to be matched is reduced in size from an original image.