JPH03250384A - Character recognizing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To attain character-recognizing of picture information read once with changing resolution while changing resolution and to improve the processing speed of the whole by allowing picture data to be divided into first and second storing parts and to be stored and transmitting one piece of data of the first storing part to a character recognizing part or reproducing and transmitting original picture data to the character recognizing part. CONSTITUTION:Picture information converted into an electric signal and converted into a binary data at a converting part 2 after being read optically at a picture reading part 1 is compressed by being extracted regularly by a first control part and is stored in a first storing part 7 and the extracted and remaining picture information is stored in a second storing part 8 by a second control part. Next, after the compressed data are read out from the first storing part 7 by a third control part or original picture information is reproduced from the data stored in the first storing part 7 and the second storing part 8 and is transmitted to a character recognizing part 12 by a fourth control part, character recognization is executed. Thus, reading is executed with low resolution, the character recognization is executed at high speed, and when the recognization is not attained precisely, the recognization is attained with the high resolution without executing the reading again.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a character recognition device that reads a manuscript and converts input image data such as Chinese characters and alphanumeric characters into character code information.

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, character recognition devices have come to be used as input devices for character editing devices, image databases, and the like.

A conventional character recognition device will be described below.

Figure 5 is a functional block diagram of a conventional character recognition device.
52 is an image reading unit 51 that optically reads image information at a resolution of 400 DP I and converts it into an electrical signal.
53 is an S/P converter that converts serially sent binary data into parallel data; 54 is an image memory; 55 is a binarization unit 5;
an address generator 5 for generating an address for writing image data into the image memory 54 in response to a command from 2;
6 is a data buffer that sends the image data converted in parallel by the S/P converter 53 to the image memory 54; 57 is a character recognition unit that reads the image data stored in the image memory 54 and performs character recognition; 58 is an address generator This address buffer outputs the write address sent from the device 55 and the read address sent from the character recognition unit 57 to the image memory 54.

Regarding the conventional character recognition device configured as described above,
The operation will be explained below.

First, the image reading unit 51 reads image information for character recognition at a resolution of 400 DP and converts it into an electrical signal.
Output as bit-by-bit serial data. The image information output from the image reading section 51 is converted into a 2Vi signal by the binarization section 52, and is sent to the S/P as serial data.
After being sent to the converter 53, it is sent to the data buffer 56 as parallel data. At the same time, address generator 5
5 is a data buffer 5 according to a command from the binarization unit 52.
It generates an address for writing the image information sent to 6 into the image memory, and sends it to the sofa 58. Next, based on the address sent to the address buffer 58, image information is written from the image memory 54i: data buffer 56. When the 16-bit rejected image information is written to the image memory 54 at T, the character recognition unit 57
The address of the image memory is specified via the address/1 buffer 58, image information is read, and character recognition is performed.

However, in the above conventional configuration, the resolution is 400DP.
The image information read by I was processed by 400DP I for character recognition, so even characters that could be sufficiently recognized by 200DP I, such as clear alphanumeric characters with good print quality, had to be processed by 400DP+. The problem was that the processing speed was slow. In addition, some image reading devices have a function to switch the resolution in the image reading section, but in this case, if characters are not recognized accurately after reading at a lower resolution, It was inconvenient to have to change the resolution of the part and read it again.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, the present invention includes: a reading unit that optically reads a document and converts it into an electrical signal; a converting unit that converts the electrical signal into binary data;
a character recognition unit that performs character recognition based on value data; a data storage unit having a first storage unit and a second storage unit; and a data storage unit that regularly extracts first data from the binary data; a first control unit that regularly draws second data from the binary data and stores it in the second storage unit; and a second control unit that stores the first data from the first storage unit. a third control unit that reads out the data and sends it to the character recognition unit; reads out the first data and the second data from the first storage unit and the second storage unit; synthesizes the binary data; and a fourth control section that sends data to the character recognition section.

Operation The present invention has the above-described configuration, whereby the image information that is optically read by the image reading section, converted into an electric signal, and converted into binary data by the conversion section is regularly extracted by the first control section. The image information is compressed and stored in the first storage section, and the remaining extracted image information is stored in the second storage section by the second control section. Next, the compressed data is read out from the first storage section by the third control section, or the compressed data is read out from the first storage section by the fourth control section.
2j The original image information is reproduced from the data stored in the unique part, and after being sent to the character recognition section, character recognition is performed.

Embodiment FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of a character recognition device in an embodiment of the present invention. In Figure 1, 1 represents image information 4
00DP The image reading section optically reads the signal and converts it into an electrical signal with an analysis level of I, 2 is the binarization section that binarizes the electrical signal from the image reading section 1, and 3 is sent to the SI 1J a-box. 2
4 is an S/'P converter that converts direct data into parallel data, 4 is a 16-bit data buffer that temporarily stores data sent from the S, -'P converter 3, 5 is an image memory, 6 is is the image memo Il from data buffer 4
An address generator 5 specifies the address of the image memory 5 when image data is sent, and 7 and 8 temporarily store the image data stored in the image memory 5 when reading it out at resolutions of 400DPI and 200DPI. The 16-bit data buffers 9 and 10 transfer the image data stored in the image memory 5 to 400 DP I and 2.
00DP An address converter that specifies the address of the image memory 5 when reading with I; 11 an address buffer that temporarily stores the addresses specified from the address generator 6 and address converters 9 and 10 and outputs it to the image memory 5;
2 is a character recognition unit that performs character recognition on image data sent from data buffers 7 and 8;

The configuration of the image memory 5 will be described below. In FIG. 2, the image memory 5 is composed of eight blocks, block 21 to block 28, each having an 8-bit configuration. Each block is fidget n! It can be accessed independently from the outside and can be handled as a 16-hit memory by combining blocks 21 and 22, blocks 23 and 24, blocks 25 and 26, and blocks 27 and 28.

The operation of the character recognition device of this embodiment configured as described above will be described below.

Assuming that reading is performed at 400 DPI and the number of pixels in one line of the original is 3200 dots, if the unit of data to be processed is 16 bits, the number of data in one line will be 200 as shown in FIG.

First, the image reading unit 81 converts optically read image data into an electrical signal, and the electrical signal is binarized by the binarization unit 2 . The binarized image data is converted into 1 by the S/P converter 3.
The data is converted into parallel data in units of 6 bits and sent to the data buffer 4.

When the image data converted in parallel is sent to the data buffer 4, the even bits of the image data are written to the lower 8 bits 1 of the data buffer 4, and the odd bits are written to the upper 8 bits, as shown in FIG. The image data written to the data buffer 4 is successively written to the addresses specified by the address generator 6 in the image memory 5.

Writing image data into the image memory 5 will be described below. In FIG. 2, writing is performed in units of 16 bits, that is, blocks 21 and 22 (hereinafter referred to as block A), blocks 23 and 24 (hereinafter referred to as block B), blocks 25 and 26 (hereinafter referred to as block C), and block 27. 28 (hereinafter referred to as block D).Blocks A and B contain data of odd-numbered scanning lines in the reading operation of the image reading unit 1, and blocks C and D contain data of even-numbered scanning lines. The data of the th scanning line is written.Furthermore, among the data of the odd scanning line, the odd numbered data is distributed to block A, and the even numbered data is distributed to block B.

Also, blocks 21, 23, 25 and 27 are stored in the lower 8 bits of data buffer 4, and blocks 22, 24, .
26 and 28 correspond to the top eight hits. When the image data is written to the image memo jl 5 as described above, only the even bits of the odd constant distortion line data at the time of reading are stored in the blocks 21 and 23.

Next, image data is read out from the character recognition section 12 or the image memory 5 and character recognition is performed. The operation of the character recognition unit 12 reading image data from the image memory 5 will be described below.

In FIG. 1, when reading at a resolution of 400 DP I, the address converter 9 performs the same process as the address generator 6 did when writing data to the image memory 5 according to a command from the character recognition unit 12. The image data is read out via the data buffer 7 by sequentially specifying read addresses. At this time, the data stored in the image memory 5 is divided into the upper 8 bits and lower 8 bits of the memory, so the even number bits and odd number bits of the original image data are stored separately. - When importing data, it is converted to the same type as the original image data. When reading at a resolution of 2000 PI, the address converter 10 specifies a read address and the contents of blocks 21 and 23 in FIG. 2 are read out via the data buffer 8. At this time, the data at the same address in both blocks are distributed to the lower 8 bits of the data buffer 8 for the data in the block 21 and to the upper 8 bits of the data buffer 8 for the data in the block 23.

As described above, according to this embodiment, data regularly extracted from original image data is written into one block of a memory having four blocks, and the original image data after extraction is written into the remaining three blocks. Write regularly, resolution 2
When performing character recognition with 00DP In order to reproduce and read out data, character recognition can be performed using data at an appropriate resolution, and in the case of clear alphanumeric characters with good print quality, it is possible to process them at a resolution of 200 DPI, which improves overall character recognition. The processing speed can be improved.

In addition, character recognition was performed at a resolution of 200 DP +,
Even if the resolution is not suitable, character recognition can be performed at a resolution of 400 DPI without having to perform the reading operation again.

Effects of the Invention The present invention includes a data storage unit having a first storage unit and a second storage unit, a first control unit that regularly extracts first data from image data and stores it in the first storage unit; a second control unit that regularly extracts second data from the image data and stores it in the second storage unit; and a third control unit that reads the first data from the first storage unit and sends it to the character recognition unit. and a fourth control unit that reads the first data and the second data from the first storage unit and the second storage unit, reproduces the original image data, and sends it to the character recognition unit. Second, character recognition can be performed by changing the resolution of image information that has been read once, and the overall processing speed of character recognition can be improved. Furthermore, if the resolution at which character recognition was performed is not appropriate, the document can be read again (character recognition can be performed by changing the resolution).

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of a character recognition device according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of an image memory of the same character recognition device, and FIG. Figure 4 shows the configuration of the data buffer 4 of the character recognition device.
FIG. 5 is a functional block diagram of a conventional character recognition device. 1... Image reading unit 3... S/P converter 5... Image memory 7... Data buffer 9... Address converter 1 11... Address buffer 2... Binarization unit 4...Data buffer 6...Address generator 8...Data buffer 0...Address converter 12...Character recognition section

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] A reading section that optically reads a document and converts it into an electrical signal, a converting section that converts the electrical signal into binary data, and a character recognition section that performs character recognition based on the binary data. A data storage unit having a first storage unit and a second storage unit, and a first control unit that regularly extracts first data from the binary data and stores it in the first storage unit. a second control unit that regularly extracts second data from the binary data and stores it in the second storage unit; and a second control unit that reads the first data from the first storage unit and sends it to the character recognition unit. a third control unit that reads the first data and the second data from the first storage unit and the second storage unit, synthesizes the binary data, and sends the synthesized binary data to the character recognition unit. A character recognition device comprising: