Image processing apparatus, image processing method, and storage medium

• US 20060204099A1
• Filed: 09/12/2005
• Published: 09/14/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/08/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fuji Xerox Company Limited (Fujifilm Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Fuji Xerox Company Limited (Fujifilm Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Kimura, Shunichi
• Granted Patent: US 7,949,155 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/182
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/98 Detection or correction of errors, e.g. by rescanning the pattern or by human intervention; Evaluation of the quality of the acquired patterns
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/993 Evaluation of the quality of the acquired pattern

Abstract

An image processing apparatus includes image memory that stores an image; character recognition rate acquisition unit that segments the image stored in the image memory into a plurality of partial images and acquiring a character recognition rate for each partial image; image quality assessment unit that calculates a parameter showing the image quality of the image based on the character recognition rates of the plural partial images acquired by the character recognition rate acquisition unit; and output unit that outputs assessment results obtained by the image quality assessment unit.

Claims

1. An image processing apparatus comprising:

an image memory that stores an image;

a character recognition rate acquisition unit that segments the image stored in the image memory into a plurality of partial images and acquiring a character recognition rate for each partial image;

an image quality assessment unit that calculates a parameter showing the image quality of the image based on the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images acquired by the character recognition rate acquisition unit; and

an output unit that outputs assessment results obtained by the image quality assessment unit.

2. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the character recognition rate acquisition unit further comprising:

an image segmentation unit that segments the image stored in the image memory into a plurality of partial images; and

a character recognition unit that performs character recognition processing on each of the plurality of partial images segmented by the image segmentation unit.

3. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the character recognition rate acquisition unit further comprising:

a character recognition unit that performs character recognition processing on the image stored by the image memory; and

an image segmentation unit that segments the image that has been subjected to character recognition processing by the character recognition unit into a plurality of partial images.

4. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the parameter reflects a positional measure that indicates a position in the distribution of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images.

5. The image processing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the positional measure is any of the maximum value, minimum value, mean value, median value, or mode value of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images.

6. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the parameter reflects a distributional measure showing the spread of the distribution of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images.

7. The image processing apparatus according to claim 6, wherein the parameter is calculated using at least two measures from among the maximum value, minimum value, mean value, median value, or mode value of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images.

8. The image processing apparatus according to claim 7, wherein the distributional measure is any of the variance, standard deviation, confidence interval width, or distance from uniform distribution of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images.

9. The image processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the parameter is a value determined based both on the positional measure, which indicates a position in the distribution of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images, and on the distributional measure, which indicates the spread of the distribution of the character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images.

10. An image processing method comprising:

storing an image;

segmenting the image into a plurality of partial images;

acquiring character recognition rates for the image;

calculating a parameter showing the image quality of the image based on the acquired character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images; and

outputting assessment results based on the obtained results of the calculation.

11. A storage medium readable by a computer, the storage medium storing a program of instructions executable by the computer, the function comprising:

storing an image;

segmenting the image into a plurality of partial images;

acquiring character recognition rates for the image;

calculating a parameter showing the image quality of the image based on the acquired character recognition rates of the plurality of partial images; and

outputting assessment results based on the obtained results of the calculation.