U.S. patent application number 11/500637 was filed with the patent office on 2006-11-30 for apparatus and method for capturing a document.
This patent application is currently assigned to Transpacific IP, Ltd.. Invention is credited to Yin-Chun Huang, Chen-Hsiang Shih.
Application Number | 20060268356 11/500637 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 21851186 |
Filed Date | 2006-11-30 |
United States Patent
Application |
20060268356 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Shih; Chen-Hsiang ; et
al. |
November 30, 2006 |
Apparatus and method for capturing a document
Abstract
An apparatus for capturing a document with a plurality of
compression models comprises an image-processing system and an
image-capturing system. The image-processing system is for
accepting a request of setting the compression models for the
document and processing the data of the document according to the
compression models, wherein the request is from an exterior
electric device connected to the apparatus. The image-capturing
system is for capturing the data of the document, and is connected
to the image-processing system and comprises multitudes of optic
devices. The method for capturing the document with these
compression models comprises accepting a request of setting the
compression models for the document; capturing the data of the
document; and processing the data of the document with these
compression models.
Inventors: |
Shih; Chen-Hsiang;
(Chang-Hua, TW) ; Huang; Yin-Chun; (Hsin-Chu,
TW) |
Correspondence
Address: |
BERKELEY LAW & TECHNOLOGY GROUP
1700NW 167TH PLACE
SUITE 240
BEAVERTON
OR
97006
US
|
Assignee: |
Transpacific IP, Ltd.
|
Family ID: |
21851186 |
Appl. No.: |
11/500637 |
Filed: |
August 7, 2006 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
|
|
10029846 |
Dec 31, 2001 |
|
|
|
11500637 |
Aug 7, 2006 |
|
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Current U.S.
Class: |
358/426.07 ;
358/1.15 |
Current CPC
Class: |
H04N 1/41 20130101 |
Class at
Publication: |
358/426.07 ;
358/001.15 |
International
Class: |
H04N 1/00 20060101
H04N001/00 |
Claims
1.-12. (canceled)
13. A scanner, comprising: an image-capturing component adapted to
obtain a preliminary scanned image of a document; and an
image-processing component adapted to: display the preliminary
scanned image of said document; receive a selection of a scanning
zone of the preliminary scanned image, wherein the scanning zone
comprises less than the entire preliminary scanned image; and
receive a selection of at least one sub-zone of the scanning zone,
wherein selection of the at least one sub-zone comprises
designation of an arbitrary area of the scanning zone, and wherein
selection of a sub-zone further comprises designation of a
compression model for the sub-zone, wherein the compression model
defines at least one compression ratio.
14. The scanner of claim 13, wherein the image-capturing component
is further adapted to scan said document in accordance with the
received selection of a scanning zone and at least one
sub-zone.
15. The scanner of claim 13, wherein said compression model defines
differing compression configurations for at least two portions of
the image.
16. The scanner of claim 15, wherein the differing compression
configurations comprise at least lossy and lossless
compression.
17. An apparatus, comprising: means for pre-scanning an object to
obtain a preliminary scanned image including a scanning zone; means
for obtaining a chrominance and luminance analysis of at least a
portion of the scanning zone; and means for displaying a plurality
of user-selectable sub-zones associated with a plurality of
user-selectable compression ratios, wherein the sub-zones and
compression ratios are determined based at least in part on the
obtained chrominance and luminance analysis.
18. The apparatus of claim 17, further comprising means for
displaying said plurality of user-selectable sub-zones.
19. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein said plurality of
compression ratios comprise at least lossy and lossless compression
ratios.
20. An article comprising a storage medium having stored thereon
instructions that, when executed, result in: obtaining a
preliminary scanned image of a document; selecting a scanning zone
of the document based on the preliminary scanned image, wherein the
scanning zone comprises less than the entire document; selecting at
least one sub-zone of the scanning zone, wherein selecting at least
one sub-zone comprises designation of an arbitrary area of the
scanning zone, and wherein selecting a sub-zone further comprises
designation of at least one compression ratio for the sub-zone; and
scanning the document in accordance with the selected scanning zone
and selected at least one sub-zone.
21. The article of claim 20, wherein the instructions, when
executed, further result in: displaying said preliminary scanned
image.
22. The article of claim 20, wherein the instructions, when
executed, further result in: providing data corresponding to said
scanned document to an external device.
23. The article of claim 20, wherein the instructions, when
executed, further result in: displaying one or more user-selectable
scan zones.
24. The article of claim 20, wherein the instructions, when
executed, further result in: designating a combination of lossy and
lossless compression ratios for the at least one sub-zone.
25. An article comprising a storage medium having stored thereon
instructions that, when executed, result in: pre-scanning an object
to obtain a preliminary scanned image including a scanning zone;
obtaining a chrominance and luminance analysis of at least a
portion of the scanning zone; and displaying a plurality of
user-selectable sub-zones associated with a plurality of
user-selectable compression ratios, wherein the sub-zones and
compression ratios are determined based at least in part on said
chrominance and luminance analysis.
26. The article of claim 25, wherein the instructions, when
executed, further result in: determining a combination of lossy and
lossless compression ratios as the plurality of user-selectable
compression ratios.
Description
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
[0001] 1. Field of the Invention
[0002] The invention relates to an image-capturing apparatus and
method, and more particularly relates to an image-capturing system
and method with compression technologies.
[0003] 2. Description of the Prior Art
[0004] Most computer systems use a form of raster image to output
image data to a visual output device such as a cathode ray tube
(CRT) monitor, liquid crystal display (LCD), or a printer such as a
color laser copier. A raster image is represented as a series of
scan lines of pixels, wherein each pixel is accessed in a
sequential manner, and each scan line is processed. An area to
which image data may be output sequentially by the visual output
device is referred to as a page. The image data of a page provides
its complete visual representation.
[0005] Interpreters of page description languages typically process
images in one or both of two modes: band mode and frame mode. Both
of these however generally require a buffer memory which can hold
the entire visual representation of a page, it is desirable to
reduce the buffer memory requirements, for example by using some
form of compression. In general apparatus of image-capture, such as
a scanner, there are two models in a technology of compression.
"Loss-less" is one that image data captured by the scanner is
decompressed without distortion, while "Lossy" is one that the
image data is distorted after decompression. One compression method
is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,190 to Mikkelsen et al. related to
processes and apparatus for processing image data. A page of an
image is divided into several regions. Each of these regions may be
compressed according to a different technique according to the kind
of data within the region. Each region can be compressed with a
method that works well for the data contained in that region.
[0006] Another compression method is shown in U.S. Pat. No.
6,097,845 to Ng et al. It is for discriminating among image
characteristics in order to select among a plurality of compression
techniques. Multiple compression schemes are applied to a source
image concurrently and the results are stored. Image discrimination
is performed in parallel with the image compression to generate a
recommendation regarding the stored compressed images.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0007] It is a principal object of the present invention to provide
a system and method of image capture. Users can determine a
captured image coordinated with settings of various compression
models. Thus, the capture rate speeds up as well as the captured
image isn't distorted.
[0008] It is another object of the present invention to provide a
method of scanning applied on a scanner. A scanned object can be
divided into various zones with various compression ratios set by
users.
[0009] In the present invention, an apparatus for capturing a
document with a plurality of compression models comprises an
image-processing system and an image-capturing system. The
image-processing system is for accepting a request of setting the
compression models for the document and processing the data of the
document according to the compression models, wherein the request
is from an exterior electric device connected to the apparatus. The
image-capturing system is for capturing the data of the document,
and is connected to the image-processing system and comprises
multitudes of optic devices. The method for capturing the document
with these compression models comprises accepting a request of
setting the compression models for the document; capturing the data
of the document; and processing the data of the document with these
compression models.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0010] A better understanding of the invention may be derived by
reading the following detailed description with reference to the
accompanying drawings wherein:
[0011] FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an image-capturing system 11
for practicing the present invention; and
[0012] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating the flow chart in
accordance with the present invention.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
[0013] While the invention is described in terms of a single
preferred embodiment, those skilled in the art will recognize that
many devices described below can be altered as well as other
substitutions with same function and can be freely made without
departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
[0014] Furthermore, the drawings are not necessarily to scale for
clarify of illustration and should not be interpreted in a limiting
sense. Furthermore, the present invention can be applied on other
image-capturing apparatus without limitation of a scanner in the
present invention.
[0015] In the present invention, a capturing system for capturing a
document with a plurality of compression models comprises
computer-readable programs, an processing system, and a scanning
system. The computer-readable programs are stored in a computer
connected to said capturing system and used for providing a display
interface for assigning the compression models to the zones on the
document. The processing system is for accepting a request of
setting the compression models for the document and processing the
data of the document according to the compression models. The
request is from the computer-readable programs. The scanning system
is connected to the processing system and used for capturing the
data of the document and transferring the data to the processing
system. The method for capturing the document with these
compression models comprises accepting a request of setting the
compression models for the document; capturing the data of the
document; and processing the data of the document with these
compression models.
[0016] Referring now to FIG. 1, there is shown a block diagram of
an image-capturing system for practicing the present invention. The
image-capturing system 11 may be implemented as functional
components within a scanning system, and may take the form of
hardware or software, or some combination thereof. In one
embodiment, the components of FIG. 1 may be implemented in any
hardware platform suitable for a scanning system. For example,
there are a data capture part 12 and a data process part 14 in the
image-capturing system 11. The data capture part 12, such as
optical devices and the related peripheral apparatus or circuits,
is responsible to capture the raw data of a document 10 when the
document 10 is scanned by the image-capturing system 11. The
document 10 is typically a paper document containing a source image
of some kind. The source image may be primarily grayscale, such as
a photograph, or primarily bitonal, such as text. Alternatively,
the source image is a more complex image type incorporating both
grayscale and bitonal components.
[0017] In such cases, the data process part 14, such as
microprocessor and related peripheral devices and circuits, is
responsible for processing the raw data and executing various types
of compression for the raw data. For example, color compression may
be used, in which case an analysis of chrominance and luminance
components might be performed in order to provide recommendations
among various color and non-color compression schemes. Next, the
data process part 14 outputs the processed image data to a host
computer 16 for further data processing.
[0018] In one embodiment of the present invention, the data process
part 14 can provides users to select various compression models,
such as "Loss-less" and "Lossy", for a single document 10 through
the host computer 16. For example, users can select "Loss-less"
compression model for the source image of the document 10 on
consideration of non-distortion. The "Loss-less" compression model
processes the image data with the lower ratio of compression, which
doesn't result in distortion through decompression by the host
computer 16. On the other hand, users select "Lossy" compression
model for the other inferior parts of the document 10 on
consideration of the less capacity of data. The "Lossy" compression
model processes the image data with the higher ratio of
compression, which may reduce the capacity of the image data and
speed up the scanning process.
[0019] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating the flow chart in
accordance with the present invention. First, pre-scanning of a
document is performed by the scanner with default settings (step
20) in order to perform classification of the document. Users can
view the pre-scanned image on a display screen with any image
software in the host computer. Next, users would select a scanned
zone for the document they want through the tools provided by the
image software (step 22). As one of key features of the present
invention, users can further determine one or more "Loss-less"
zones and "Lossy" zones on the selected scanned zone (step 24). In
the present invention, the geometric shapes of the "Loss-less" or
"Lossy" zones can be arbitrary, dependent on the users and the
tools provided by the image software. Then the formal scanning of
the document is implemented by the scanner according to the users'
settings through the host computer (step 26).
[0020] While this invention has been described with reference to
illustrative embodiments, this description is not intended to be
construed in a limiting sense. Various modifications and
combinations of the illustrative embodiments, as well as other
embodiments of the invention, will be apparent to persons skilled
in the art upon reference to the description. It is therefore
intended that the appended claims encompass any such modifications
or embodiments.
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