Apparatus and method for dynamically routing documents using dynamic control documents and data streams

An apparatus comprising:

• at least one processor;
• a memory coupled to the at least one processor;
• a digital image of a paper-based document, the digital image including an image of a label that includes a unique identifier, the digital image residing in the memory;
• and
• a paper gateway application residing in the memory and being executed by the at least one processor, the paper gateway application receiving the digital image of the paper-based document and creating a dynamic control document associated with the image of the paper based document, the paper gateway application including;
• a flow manager, the flow manager controlling processing of the digital image by parsing the dynamic control document for document processing instructions;
• a document discriminator, the document discriminator parsing the document image for the image of the label and determining the unique identifier from the image of the label;
• and
• an image processor, wherein the image processor retrieves image processing instructions corresponding to the unique identifier and adds the image processing instructions to the dynamic control document.

A method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a document image including a label image that comprises a unique identifier;
• creating a dynamic control document corresponding to the document image;
• performing image processing on the document image as specified by the dynamic control document;
• and
• updating the dynamic control document with results from the image processing of the document image.

A method comprising the steps of:

• receiving a document image including a label image that comprises a unique identifier;
• creating a dynamic control document corresponding to the document image;
• parsing the document image for the label image to determine the unique identifier and updating the dynamic control document corresponding to the unique identifier;
• retrieving image processing instructions corresponding to unique identifier and updating the dynamic control document corresponding to the image processing instructions;
• and
• perform image processing according to the dynamic control document.

A program product comprising:

• a paper gateway application, the paper gateway application receiving a digital image of the paper-based document and creating a dynamic control document associated with the image of the paper based document, the paper gateway application including;
• a flow manager, the flow manager controlling processing of the digital image by parsing the dynamic control document for document processing instructions;
• a document discriminator, the document discriminator parsing the document image for a image of a label and determining the unique identifier from the image of the label;
• and
• an image processor, wherein the image processor retrieves image processing instructions corresponding to the unique identifier and adds the image processing instructions to the dynamic control document;
• and
• signal bearing media bearing the page gateway application.