# US 2019/0377941 A1 · Character recognition apparatus and character recognition method

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- Number: US 2019/0377941 A1
- Document ID: US20190377941A1
- Status: Published application
- Kind: A1
- Application number: 16/432,252
- Filed: 2019-06-05
- Published: 2019-12-12
- Earliest claimed: 2018-06-11
- Assignees: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
- Applicants: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha
- Inventors: TOHRU NAKANISHI; ZENKEN KIN
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US20190377941A1

## CPC

- G06V 30/416: Extracting the logical structure, e.g. chapters, sections or page numbers; Identifying elements of the document, e.g. authors
- G06V 30/153: {using recognition of characters or words}
- G06V 30/333: {Preprocessing; Feature extraction}
- G06V 30/373: {using a special pattern or subpattern alphabet}
- G06V 30/10: Character recognition
- G06V: IMAGE OR VIDEO RECOGNITION OR UNDERSTANDING

## Abstract

A book digitization apparatus includes: a three-dimensional data generation unit that generates three-dimensional data of a book; a two-dimensional page data generation unit that generates two-dimensional page data from the three-dimensional data; and a character recognition unit that extracts a plurality of unique points of a character from a plurality of points which are included in the two-dimensional page data and each of which has a value corresponding to ink, thereby recognizing the character.

## Claims

### Claim 1

A character recognition apparatus comprising:
a three-dimensional data generation unit that captures an image of a book and generates three-dimensional data of the book;
a two-dimensional page data generation unit that generates, from the three-dimensional data, two-dimensional page data that includes information about a plurality of points each having a value corresponding to ink or a value corresponding to a background; and
a recognition unit that extracts a plurality of unique points of a character from the plurality of points which are included in the two-dimensional page data and each of which has the value corresponding to the ink, thereby recognizing the character.

### Claim 2 (depends on 1)

The character recognition apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising
a storage unit that stores data of the unique points, wherein
the recognition unit refers to the data of the unique points stored in the storage unit and recognizes the character.

### Claim 3 (depends on 1)

The character recognition apparatus according to claim 1, wherein
the recognition unit includes a unique point data generation unit that generates data of the unique points in accordance with a past character recognition result, and
the character is recognized by referring to the data of the unique points, which is generated by the unique point data generation unit.

### Claim 4 (depends on 1)

The character recognition apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the recognition unit extracts a part of the unique points of the character from the plurality of points each having the value corresponding to the ink, thereby recognizing the character.

### Claim 5

A character recognition method comprising:
capturing an image of a book and generating three-dimensional data of the book;
generating, from the three-dimensional data, two-dimensional page data that includes information about a plurality of points each having a value corresponding to ink or a value corresponding to a background; and
extracting a plurality of unique points of a character from the plurality of points which are included in the two-dimensional page data and each of which has the value corresponding to the ink, thereby recognizing the character.