Generation Of Documents From Images
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsMerle Robinson, Matthieu Uyttendaele, Zhengyou Zhang, Patrice Simard
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Abstract
A system for generating soft copy (digital) versions of hard copy documents uses images of the hard copy documents. The images may be captured using a device suitable for capturing images, like a camera phone. Once available, the images may be processed to improve their suitability for document generation. The images may then be processed to recognize and generate soft copy versions of the documents represented by the images.
Claims20
A method for generating a soft copy document, comprising:
- acquiring two or more images of one or more hard copy documents;
- processing the images to be better suited for soft copy document generation;
- creating a composite image from the images by joining the images;
- recognizing one or more particular text elements in the composite image;
- and
- generating a soft copy document.
A device, comprising:
- a document generation module configured to generate a soft copy document;
- an image acquisition module configured to acquire two or more images of one or more hard copy documents;
- an image processing module configured to process the images to be better suited for soft copy document generation;
- an image creation module configured to create a composite image from the images;
- and
- an element recognition module configured to recognize one or more particular text elements in the composite image.
One or more computer-readable media containing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, implement a computer process, the computer process comprising:
- acquiring one or more images of one or more hard copy documents using a mobile telephone with camera functionality;
- processing the images to be better suited for soft copy document generation;
- creating a composite image from the images;
- recognizing particular text elements in the composite image;
- identifying one or more document types from the composite image and recognizing further particular text elements according to known characteristics of the document types;
- if one or more of the particular text elements and the further particular text elements cannot be identified with a defined level of certainty, presenting one or more selectable choices for the one or more elements that cannot be identified with a defined level of certainty and recognizing the elements as the selected choices;
- and
- generating a soft copy document.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.