A diacritical marker recognition system and method recognizes diacritical markers in a character image based upon an analysis by a neural network of the portion of the character image most likely to contain a diacritical marker. Once the neural network determines that a diacritical marker most likely exists in the character image, the system determines by using heuristics whether a diacritical marker exists or whether the character image appears to contain a diacritical marker which is actually a regular character.

Neural network-based diacritical marker recognition system and method

Following scanning of a document image, and optical character recognition (OCR) processing, the outputted OCR text is processed to determine a text format (typeface and font size) to match the OCR text to the originally scanned image. The text format is identified by matching word sizes rather than individual character sizes. In particular, for each word and for each of a plurality of candidate typefaces, a scaling factor is calculated to match a typeface rendering of the word to the width of the word in the originally scanned image. After all of the scaling factors have been calculated, a cluster analysis is performed to identify close clusters of scaling factors for a typeface, indicative of a good typeface fit at a constant scaling factor (font size).

Method and apparatus for formatting OCR text

A processor measures size or spacing of connected components for an image of text by obtaining a distribution of measurements of distances between edges of connected components. The distances are measured along lines extending in a measuring direction, such as a direction parallel or perpendicular to lines of text, which can be determined based on a measurement of skew. The distance measurements then can be used to produce a distribution of measurements as a function of distance, such as a histogram. Sufficient distances are measured that the histogram or other distribution data indicates a measure of size or spacing of connected components for the image, such as a stroke width, a maximum character width or height, or a spacing between characters, words, or lines. To measure sizes, distance can be measured across pixels within connected components. To measure spacings, distance can be measured across pixels that are not within connected components. Measurements in a direction parallel to lines of text can indicate intercharacter spacing, interword spacing, vertical stroke width, and maximum character width. Measurements in a direction perpendicular to lines of text can indicate interline spacing, horizontal stroke width, and maximum character height. A machine could store an input image in memory, obtain data indicating size or spacing of connected components, modify the stored data according to the sizes or spacings indicated, and provide an output image based on the modification. The data indicating size or spacing could be used in segmentation and character recognition.

Measuring character and stroke sizes and spacings for an image

A method for automatically magnifying a copy job to result in a copied text that is not smaller than a user specified minimum size. An original document is automatically scanned and an analysis performed to determine, the smallest text size within the original document. A magnification for rendering the document can then be set. Media size can then be selected appropriately, and an image magnification ratio and output document size selections optimized to create a text size in the resulting rendering document which are as close as possible to a user's minimum text size selection when the user selected minimum text size cannot be achieved.

Intelligent text driven document sizing

To remove an underline even if a business document includes a chart or even if the underline touches a character string, provided is an underline removal apparatus that removes an underline area from binary image data including the underline area touching a character string; the underline removal apparatus including: an underline search processing unit that executes a line template matching process by setting a point on the binary image data as a starting point to set a rectangular line template, tracing pixels included in the line template, and extracting a polyline indicating underline position coordinates; and an underline removal processing unit that uses the polyline to execute a process of obtaining background borderline coordinates between the underline area and a background area and character borderline coordinates between the underline area and the character string obtained by applying an interpolation process to a part in the underline area touching the character string and to execute a process of replacing an area surrounded by the background borderline coordinates and the character borderline coordinates by a color of pixels of the background area.

Underline removal apparatus

Proportional spaced text recognition apparatus and method is disclosed. The invention is provided for optical character recognition (OCR) systems and provides recognition of both proportional spacing and fixed pitch type formats. The invention also provides recognition of accented characters, which are a common occurrence in Western European type texts.

Amy L. Lowrie

Papers

Proportional spaced text recognition apparatus and method