Image quality assurance systems and methodologies for improving the identification of and access speed to image quality suspects in documents

• US 20050220324A1
• Filed: 04/30/2003
• Published: 10/06/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Digital Check Corp
• Original Assignee: Unisys Corporation
• Inventors: Klein, Robert D., Reasoner, George E. Jr., Lapan, Craig F.
• Granted Patent: US 7,167,580 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/112
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/993 Evaluation of the quality of the acquired pattern
• CPC Class Codes: G07D 11/30 Tracking or tracing valuable papers or cassettes

Abstract

An image quality assurance method for identifying image defects in a plurality of imaged documents, where each imaged document includes at least one image rendition. The image renditions are analyzed to provide selected image metrics, the latter of which are compared against preselected image quality metric threshold values. An image quality flag is generated for any image rendition if at least one of the selected image metrics for that image rendition does not successfully compare against the preselected image quality metric threshold values. A record entry is created in an image quality flag file for those documents having at least one flagged image rendition, the record entry including information about the selected image metrics of the at least one flagged image rendition for that imaged document. Image defects in a plurality of imaged documents can be identified by examining the record entries in the image quality flag file.

Claims

1. An image quality assurance method for identifying image defects in a plurality of imaged documents, each imaged document including at least one image rendition, the method comprising the steps of:

analyzing each of the at least one image rendition of each imaged document in an image quality metric generation process to provide selected image metrics;

comparing the selected image metrics for each of the at least one image rendition of each imaged document against preselected image quality metric threshold values;

generating an image quality flag for any of the at least one image rendition of the plurality of imaged documents if at least one of the selected image metrics for that image rendition does not successfully compare against the preselected image quality metric threshold values; and

,

creating a record entry in an image quality flag file for each of the plurality of imaged documents having at least one flagged image rendition, the record entry including information about the selected image metrics of the at least one flagged image rendition for that imaged document, wherein the image defects in a plurality of imaged documents can be identified by examining the record entries in the image quality flag file.

2. The image quality assurance method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

analyzing each document of the plurality of documents in a document metrics process order to provide selected document metrics;

comparing the selected document metrics for each document against preselected document metric threshold values;

generating an image quality flag for any of the documents if at least one of the selected document metrics for that document does not successfully compare against the preselected document metric threshold values; and

,

creating a record entry in the image quality flag file for each of the plurality of documents having at least one flagged document metric, the record entry including information about the document metrics for that document.

3. The image quality assurance method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

creating the image quality flag file, including an image quality flag file header record.

4. The image quality assurance method of claim 3, wherein the image quality flag file creation step is carried out prior to the step of analyzing the at least one image rendition.

5. The image quality assurance method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

creating an image quality parameter file for storing the preselected image quality metric threshold values.

6. The image quality assurance method of claim 5, wherein the image quality parameter file creation step is carried out prior to the step of analyzing the at least one image rendition.

7. The image quality assurance method of claim 1, wherein each image quality flag file record entry further includes a global image quality condition field indicating which of the at least one image renditions for that imaged document has been flagged.

8. The image quality assurance method of claim 3, wherein the image quality flag file further comprises header information including the preselected image quality metric threshold values.

9. The image quality assurance method of claim 8, wherein the preselected image quality metric threshold values further comprises an image quality flag set field, the image quality flag set field including data that may be set to disable the image quality flag generating step for each image quality condition.

10. The image quality assurance method of claim 1, wherein the selected image metrics include image dimensional data, compressed image packet size, image gray level histograms, image skew angle, hardware/software feed check errors, and/or transport status/error detection information.

11. The image quality assurance method of claim 2, wherein the selected document metrics are selected from the group comprising information about the type and information about the physical dimensions of each of the plurality of imaged documents.

12. The image quality assurance method of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

capturing the at least one image rendition for each of the plurality of imaged documents;

storing the at least one captured image rendition for each of the plurality of imaged documents in image rendition files according to type of image rendition; and

,

creating an image index file including a record for each imaged document, the image index file for individually accessing any of the stored image rendition files and for indexing into any of the record entries in the image quality flag file.

13. The image quality assurance method of claim 12, wherein for each of the plurality of imaged documents having at least one flagged image rendition, the method further comprising the step of:

modifying the image index file record in the image index file to include a reference to the corresponding image quality flag file record entry in the image quality flag file.

14. The image quality assurance method of claim 13, further comprising the step of:

setting a global image quality flag for that image index file record in the image index file, the global image quality flag indicating that the imaged document has been checked for image defects.

15. The image quality assurance method of claim 14, wherein the global image quality flag further indicates whether the imaged document has image defects.

16. The image quality assurance method of claim 13, wherein the image quality flag file record entry referenced by the image index file document record includes a cross-reference pointing to the image index file document record and further includes all of the image quality flags associated with the flagged image rendition for that document.

17. The image quality assurance method of claim 16, further comprising the step of:

storing the selected image metrics and all of the image quality flags in the image quality flag file.

18. The image quality assurance method of claim 16, further comprising the step of:

modifying the image index file to indicate that image quality has been checked for all of the plurality of imaged documents.

19. The image quality assurance method of claim 16, wherein the method is carried out in a document processor.

20. A method of retrieving from a plurality of imaged documents having at least one image rendition stored in a file according to the type of image rendition, the image renditions suspected of having image quality defects, the method comprising the steps of:

(a). reading an image quality flag file to determine whether an image quality flag file record entry exists, wherein an image quality flag file record entry exists for each imaged document if at least one image metric of the at least one image rendition of the imaged document does not successfully compare against a preselected image quality metric threshold value;

(b). indexing from the determined image quality flag file record entry into a corresponding record in an image index file, wherein the image index file includes a record for each imaged document and wherein the image index file is used to individually access any of the stored image rendition files; and

,

(c). pointing from the image index file record field into the stored image renditions suspected of having image quality defects.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein steps (a) through (c) are carried out for each image quality flag file record entry in the image quality flag file.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the indexing step uses an index offset in the image quality flag file record entry to index into the record in the image index file.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein the method is carried out by an imaging application executing in a document processing system.

24. An image quality assurance method for identifying image defects in a plurality of imaged documents, each imaged document including at least one image rendition stored in at least one image rendition file according to type of image rendition, the method comprising the steps of:

capturing each image rendition for each of the plurality of imaged documents;

storing each captured image rendition for each of the plurality of imaged documents in image rendition files according to type of image rendition; and

,

creating an image index file including a document record entry for each imaged document, the image index file for individually accessing any of the stored image rendition files and for indexing into any of the record entries in the image quality flag file;

analyzing each image rendition of each imaged document in an image quality metric generation process to provide selected document and image metrics;

comparing the selected document and image metrics for each of the image renditions of each imaged document against preselected document and image quality metric threshold values;

generating an image quality flag for any of the image renditions of the plurality of imaged documents if at least one of the selected document or image metrics for that image rendition does not successfully compare against the preselected image quality metric threshold values;

creating an image quality flag file, wherein the image quality flag file contains a record entry for each of the plurality of imaged documents having at least one flagged image rendition and each record entry includes the at least one flagged image renditions for that imaged document and a global image quality flag field indicating which of the at least one image renditions for that imaged document has been flagged, and,

for each of the plurality of imaged documents having at least one flagged image rendition;

modifying the image index file record in the image index file to include a reference to the corresponding image quality flag file record entry in the image quality flag file; and

,

setting a global image quality flag for that image index file record field in the image index file, the global image quality flag indicating that the imaged document has been checked for image defects and no defects were detected and that image defects have been found.

25. An image quality assurance method for identifying image defects in a plurality of imaged documents, each imaged document including at least one image rendition stored in an image rendition file according to type of image rendition, the method comprising the steps of:

analyzing each of the at least one image rendition of each imaged document in an image quality metric generation process to provide selected image metrics;

comparing the selected image metrics for each of the at least one image rendition of each imaged document against preselected image quality metric threshold values;

generating an image quality flag for any of the at least one image rendition of the plurality of imaged documents if at least one of the selected image metrics for that image rendition does not successfully compare against the preselected image quality metric threshold values; and

,

creating a record entry in an image quality flag file for each of the plurality of imaged documents having at least one flagged image rendition, the record entry including information about the selected image metrics of the at least one flagged image rendition for that imaged document, wherein the image defects in a plurality of imaged documents can be identified by examining the record entries in the image quality flag file.

26. The image quality assurance method of claim 25, further comprising the steps of:

analyzing each document of the plurality of documents in a document metrics process order to provide selected document metrics;

comparing the selected document metrics for each document against predetermined document measurement values;

generating an image quality flag for any of the documents if at least one of the selected document metrics for that document does not successfully compare against the predetermined document measurement values; and

,

creating a record entry in the image quality flag file for each of the plurality of documents having at least one flagged document metric, the record entry including information about the document metrics for that document.

27. The image quality assurance method of claim 25, further comprising the steps of:

capturing the at least one image rendition for each of the plurality of imaged documents; and

,

storing the at least one captured image rendition for each of the plurality of imaged documents in image rendition files according to type of image rendition.

28. The image quality assurance method of claim 25, further comprising the steps of:

creating an image index file including a record for each imaged document, the image index file for individually accessing any of the stored image rendition files and for indexing into any of the record entries in the image quality flag file.

29. The image quality assurance method of claim 28, wherein for each of the plurality of imaged documents having at least one flagged image rendition, the method further comprising the step of:

modifying the image index file record in the image index file to include a reference to the corresponding image quality flag file record entry in the image quality flag file.

30. The image quality assurance method of claim 28, further comprising the step of:

setting a global image quality flag for that image index file record in the image index file, the global image quality flag indicating that the imaged document has image defects.

31. The image quality assurance method of claim 29, wherein the image quality flag file record entry referenced by the image index file document record includes a cross-reference pointing to the image index file document record and further includes all of the image quality flags associated with the flagged image rendition for that document.

32. The image quality assurance method of claim 28, further comprising the step of:

storing the selected image metrics and all of the image quality flags in the image quality flag file.

33. The image quality assurance method of claim 29, further comprising the step of:

modifying the image index file to indicate that image quality has been checked for all of the plurality of imaged documents.

34. The image quality assurance method of claim 29, wherein the method is carried out by an imaging application executing in a document processing system.