Reducing processing latency in optical character recognition for portable reading machine

• US 20050288932A1
• Filed: 04/01/2005
• Published: 12/29/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/02/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: National Federation of the Blind
• Original Assignee: K-NFB Reading Technology Inc.
• Inventors: Gibson, Lucy, Albrecht, Paul, Kurzweil, Raymond C.
• Granted Patent: US 7,629,989 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/96 Management of image or video recognition tasks
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 21/001 Teaching or communicating with blind persons G09B21/02 - G09B21/06 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 21/006 using audible presentation of the information

Abstract

A portable reading device includes a computing device and a computer readable medium storing a computer program product to receive an image and select a section of the image to process. The product processes the section of the image with a first process and when the first process is finished processing the section of the image, process a result of the first process with a second process. While the second process is processing, repeats the first process on another section of the image.

Claims

1. A computer program product residing on a computer readable medium comprising instructions for causing a portable reading device to:

receive an image;

select a section of the image to process;

process the section of the image with a first process; and

when the first process is finished processing the section of the image,

process a result of the first process with a second process, and while the second process is processing the result,

repeat the first process on another section of the image.

2. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein the first process is optical character recognition.

3. The computing program product of claim 2 wherein the second process is text to speech synthesis that uses as input a text output from the optical character recognition.

4. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein selecting is based on a user input corresponding to the user having the product in a directed reading mode.

5. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein selecting is based on selecting a first available portion of the image.

6. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein selecting is based on user-initiated input.

7. The computing program product of claim 1 wherein selecting is based on a default.

8. A method of operating a machine that processes an image, the method comprising:

receiving an image;

selecting a section of the image to process;

processing the section of the image with a first process; and

when the first process is finished processing the section of the image,

processing a result of the first process with a second process, and while the second process is processing the image,

repeating the first process on another section of the image.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the first process is optical character recognition.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein the second process is text to speech synthesis that uses as input a text output from the optical character recognition.

11. The method of claim 8 wherein selecting is based on a user input corresponding to the user having the product in a directed reading mode.

12. The method of claim 8 wherein selecting is based on selecting a first available portion of the image.

13. The method of claim 8 wherein selecting is based on user-initiated input.

14. The computing program product of claim 8 wherein selecting is based on a default.

15. A portable reading device comprising:

a computing device;

a computer readable medium storing a computer program product comprising instructions for causing the reading machine to;

receive an image;

select a section of the image to process;

process the section of the image with a first process; and

when the first process is finished processing the section of the image,

process a result of the first process with a second process; and

while the second process is processing,

repeat the first process on another section of the image.

16. The portable reading device of claim 15 wherein the first process is optical character recognition.

17. The portable reading device of claim 15 wherein the second process is text to speech synthesis that uses as input a text output from the optical character recognition.

18. The portable reading device of claim 15 wherein selecting is based on a user input corresponding to the user having the portable reading device in a directed reading mode.

19. The portable reading device of claim 15 wherein selecting is based on selecting the first available portion of the image.

20. The portable reading device of claim 15 wherein selecting is based on user-initiated input.

21. The portable reading device of claim 15 wherein selecting is based on a default.