Method and apparatus for interactively scanning images into a logical structure

#The present invention relates to the field of scanning documents into images and storing the images as electronic files. More specifically, the present invention relates to the intelligent and interactive control of such functions and the storing of the scanned images into a logical structure.

#When converting business or scientific documents from paper to electronic images, the documents often have an organization format where groups of the documents are physically separated by some type of barrier, such as boxes, staples, clips, binders, rubber bands, and even by document type (e.g., figures and text). During scanning of the documents, it is often necessary or desirable to associate the scanned images with each other to retain the original organizational format. However, existing scan capture programs provide the ability to do so only into fixed, flat structures, if at all. For example, using currently available scanner products, scanned images can be associated with one another by being placed into “documents” and/or a “batch”. These structures are extremely limited and their implementations are typically cumbersome.

#For instance, scanner products exist that allow “slipsheets” to be interspersed among documents prior to scanning. The slipsheets include barcodes or other symbols that the scanner can recognize in order to delimit groups of images and associate them with a structure of some sort. The physical handling of such slipsheets is complicated and cumbersome and attempting to allow many different logical structures to be indicated using such a method is especially difficult and prone to error. Such a solution is also quite slow and errors are impossible to detect or rectify until the documents have already been stored and/or printed out erroneously.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a scanning system in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

#FIG. 2 is a flow chart illustrating the process the scanner application performs to enable an operator to interactively scan a set of documents into a logical structure that represents the organizational format of those documents.

#FIG. 3 is a diagram of one preferred embodiment of the user interface screen displayed by the scanner application.

#The present invention relates to an improved method for the scanning and storing of documents. The following description is presented to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention and is provided in the context of a patent application and its requirements. Various modifications to the preferred embodiments and the generic principles and features described herein will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art. Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to the embodiments shown, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistent with the principles and features described herein.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a scanning system in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention. The system includes a computer 12, a conventional scanner 14 that is in communication with the computer 12 for scanning a set of documents 16, and a scanner application 18 executed by the computer 12 that allows an operator to control the scanning operation. According to the present invention, the scanner application 18 allows the operator to interactively designate logical relationships between scanned images 20 in a manner that the organizational format of the original documents is retained after scanning. The scanned images 20 and the designated logical relationship between the images 20 are stored on the computer 12 (or other type of selected device). This allows the scanned images 20 to be printed and reassembled in the original organizational format without access to the original documents 16.

#In operation, the scanner operator would invoke the scanner application 18 when a set of documents 16 needed to be scanned to convert the paper copies into electronic format, resulting in scanned images 20. As described the above, the set of documents 16 are typically organized such that groups of the documents are physically separated by some type of barrier 22, such as staples, clips, binders, rubber bands, and document type. One example of a specific situation is when an operator is scanning, and potentially copying, a set of legal documents 16. Such a situation will often require the copies to be produced in the exact format as the originals. In other words, if the originals were stapled and contained within a paper clip with other originals within a folder enclosed in a rubber band, the application 18 must produce the copies with the necessary barriers 22 (staples, clips, etc.) in place while maintaining the sequential order of the originals so that the copies are exact replica of the original files.