SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SCANNING AND PROCESSING PRINTED MEDIA

• US 20100097662A1
• Filed: 10/19/2009
• Published: 04/22/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 10/20/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Dennis Joseph Manning, John Eric Churilla
• Original Assignee: Dennis Joseph Manning, John Eric Churilla
• Inventors: CHURILLA, JOHN ERIC, Manning, Dennis Joseph
• Application Number:
  US12/581,857
• Publication Number:
  US 20100097662A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 358/448
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00795 Reading arrangements details of scanning heads H04N1/024; scanning arrangements therefor H04N1/04
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/00827 Arrangements for reading an image from an unusual original, e.g. 3-dimensional objects
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/04 Scanning arrangements , i.e. arrangements for the displacement of active reading or reproducing elements relative to the original or reproducing medium, or vice versaH04N1/387 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2201/0434 specially adapted for scanning pages of a book

Abstract

A method of scanning paper media, the method comprises rendering a three-dimensional (3D) dataset comprising a plurality of voxels that represents ink data and paper data within scanned paper media, orienting the 3D dataset to a coordinate system, perform voxel smoothing when undulations are present to remove the undulations, and electronically unfolding any folded pages.

Claims

1. A method of scanning paper media, the method comprising:

rendering a three-dimensional (3D) dataset comprising a plurality of voxels that represent ink data, paper data, or a combination thereof within scanned paper media;

orienting the 3D dataset to a coordinate system;

perform voxel smoothing when undulations are present to remove the undulations; and

electronically unfolding any folded pages.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

processing any double-side pages in order to rotate data representing a back of a particular page through a vertical axis.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:

removing any artifacts from the 3D dataset that do not represent ink, paper, or a combination thereof.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

differentiating paper data from ink data.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

filtering the paper data from the 3D dataset.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

performing voxel character recognition in order to determine a character associated with each cluster of voxels representing a character.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

applying metatags to the ink data.

8. A method of recognizing characters in volumetric ink data, the method comprising:

receiving volumetric scan data;

locating a voxel cluster within the volumetric scan data; and

determining a character match for the voxel cluster.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the character match for the voxel cluster is determined using matrix matching.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the character match for the voxel cluster is determined using feature extraction.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

creating an electronic character for the voxel cluster.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

adding the electronic character to a character string

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

comparing the character string to a library of known character strings; and

saving the character string to a database when a match is found.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

tagging the character string with metadata.

15. A method of volumetrically scanning boxed documents, the method comprising:

scanning a box of documents using MRI, X-Ray CT, T-ray, or a combination thereof to generate a three-dimensional (3D) dataset representing the box and the documents therein.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

capturing a box identification if the box of documents includes an identification;

saving the box identification in association with any documents within the box; and

removing physical box data from the 3D dataset.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

capturing addressee/addressor information from any envelopes within the box of documents;

saving the addressee/addressor information in association with any documents within the envelope; and

removing physical envelope data from the 3D dataset.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

capturing a folder identification from any folders within the box of documents;

saving the folder identification in association with any documents within the folder; and

removing physical folder data from the 3D dataset.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

determining whether the documents within the box of documents have multiple dimensions;

determining like dimensions, if the documents within the box of documents have multiple dimensions; and

sorting the documents based on the like dimensions.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

storing an electronic representation of each document; and

maintaining associations of documents having like dimensions.