System and method for de-skew of scanned images

A method comprising:

• placing a plurality of spaced apart, randomly oriented documents on a platen surface;
• retrieving axis data corresponding to a defined orientation of the platen from a memory;
• enabling a scan engine to acquire image data corresponding to the plurality of documents on the platen surface;
• determining, from the image data, a plurality of image portions, each image portion defined by an boundary corresponding to a document, wherein determining includes
• detecting characters or glyphs in at least one image portion,
• performing optical character recognition on characters or glyphs in the at least one image portion, and
• reorienting the at least one image portion in accordance with character alignment associated with a competed optical character recognition;
• detecting a linearly oriented image component associated with each document image portion;
• reorienting each image portion to generally align in accordance with each linearly oriented image component and the axis data;
• concurrently displaying the aligned image portions on a display;
• and
• faxing, e-mailing or printing the displayed image in accordance with a user selection.

A system comprising:

• a scanner having a platen configured to receive a plurality of spaced apart documents disposed on a surface thereof;
• the scanner configured to generate a scan image of the documents disposed on the platen surface;
• and
• a processor and associated memory, the processor configured to extract an image of each of the documents from the scan image in accordance with its associated boundary,
• the processor further configured to detect text or glyphs in at least one extracted image,
• the processor further configured to perform optical character recognition to the at least one extracted image,
• the processor further configured to determine an orientation of each extracted image relative to an orientation of the platen surface and an associated linear image component, the processor further configured to determine orientation of the at least one extracted image in accordance with an alignment of characters associated with a completed optical character recognition,
• the processor further configured to generate a revised scan image comprising a concurrent display of each extracted image in a substantially co-aligned orientation, and
• the processor further configured to render the revised scan image on an associated display.