JP2008197764A - Hand-written mark identifying device and hand-written mark identifying program - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To recognize a hand-written mark from a monochrome printed business form. <P>SOLUTION: This hand-written mark identifying device 9 comprises a business form image input section 11 for receiving an input of a business form image, a determination area storage section 13 for storing positional information of a determination area between an inner frame of the determination area surrounding printed characters on the business form image and an outer frame of the determination area positioned outside the inner frame of the determination area, an image segmentation section 15 for segmenting a partial image surrounded by the outer frame of the determination area from the business form image, a hand-written mark determination section 17 for determining whether a hand-written mark is written in the determination area based on the number of colored dots within the partial image processed by the image cutting section 15, and an outputting section for outputting the determination result of the hand-written mark determination section 17. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a handwritten mark identifying device and a handwritten mark identifying program.

  Characters such as “Meiji, Taisho, Showa, Heisei” are printed on the form in the entry column of the date of birth in the form. The user fills in a written character by overwriting a handwritten mark such as a circle with respect to a corresponding character such as “Showa” among the characters printed on the form. In the form in which the handwritten mark is entered in this way, the handwritten mark is detected by image recognition processing by a computer.

Conventionally, handwritten mark identification executed in a system using an optical character recognition device, an image filing device, or the like has used a color image created from a color-printed form in order to determine the presence or absence of a mark (patent) Reference 1). Specifically, by performing so-called dropout, which removes a specific color from a color image, the printed characters of a specific color printed in advance and handwritten marks written in a color different from the specific color are separated. By doing so, the handwritten mark was identified.
JP 2002-120413 A

  The conventional technique cannot be applied to a monochrome (black and white) printed form that has already been issued. Therefore, the target of the handwritten mark is determined by a manual operation (visual observation by an operator) by a human. Therefore, the business efficiency was not good. In view of the above, the main object of the present invention is to solve the above-described problems and recognize a handwritten mark that has been entered from a form printed in a single color.

  In order to solve the above-described problem, the present invention provides a handwritten mark identification device for identifying a handwritten mark written on a printed character printed on a monochrome printed form, and accepts input of the form image. Position information of the determination area sandwiched between an input unit, an inner frame of the determination area surrounding the print character on the form image, and an outer frame of the determination area located outside the inner frame of the determination area A determination area storage section for storing; an image cutting section for cutting out a partial image surrounded by an outer frame of the determination area from the form image; and a color point in the partial image after processing by the image cutting section It has a handwritten mark judgment part which judges whether the handwritten mark was written in the judgment field by number, and an output part which outputs the judgment result of the handwritten mark judgment part.

  According to the present invention, the presence / absence of a handwritten mark can be determined based on the number of colored points in a determination region where a handwritten mark is highly likely to be entered.

  Hereinafter, an embodiment of a handwritten mark identifying apparatus to which the present invention is applied will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.

  FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of a form in which handwritten marks are overwritten. In the “deposit type” column of the form in FIG. 1A, the user overwrites either “normal” or “current” with a handwritten circle.

  FIG. 1B is an enlarged view of the “normal” entry column of the form in FIG. The determination area 1b is an area for determining whether or not a handwritten mark is described. The determination area 1b is an area (a square-shaped area) sandwiched between the outer frame 1c of the determination area specified by the user and the inner frame 1a of the determination area. Inside the inner frame 1a of the determination area, there are “ordinary” printed characters printed in advance. That is, the inner frame 1a of the determination area is a circumscribed rectangle of the print character.

  As a method for determining whether or not a handwritten mark is described, the number of black dots (pixels) constituting the handwritten mark in the determination area 1b is counted. A determination method that does not exist is mentioned. However, since the determination area 1b is a complicated shape sandwiched between the outer frame 1c of the determination area and the inner frame 1a of the determination area, the amount of processing for scanning the form image to determine the presence / absence of a black spot increases. End up.

  FIG. 1C shows the contents after the print character erasing process is performed on the form image of FIG. The “ordinary” characters inside the inner frame 1a of the determination area are deleted. By this erasing process, the process of measuring the number of black spots in the rectangle surrounded by the outer frame 1c of the determination area is an alternative to the process of measuring the number of black spots in the determination area 1b. The processing amount for scanning the form image for measuring the number of black spots in the rectangle is small.

  Note that the outer frame 1c of the determination area is not limited to a quadrangle, and may be an ellipse or a polygon.

  FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of the handwritten mark identification device.

  The handwritten mark identification device 9 is configured as a computer. The computer includes at least a memory serving as storage means used when performing arithmetic processing, and an arithmetic processing device that performs the arithmetic processing. The memory is constituted by a RAM (Random Access Memory) or the like. Arithmetic processing is realized by an arithmetic processing unit configured by a CPU (Central Processing Unit) executing a program on a memory.

  The handwritten mark identification device 9 includes a control unit 10, a form image input unit 11, a form image buffer unit 12, a determination area storage unit 13, a form position correction unit 14, an image cutout unit 15, a cutout image buffer unit 16, and The handwritten mark determination unit 17 is included.

  The control unit 10 controls each unit of the handwritten mark identification device. Further, the control unit 10 communicates with other devices via a communication interface.

  The form image input unit 11 accepts input of form image data (hereinafter referred to as a form image) shown in FIG. For the input of a form image, for example, a form image may be created by reading a paper form with a scanner device, or a form image may be received from another device via a network.

  The form image buffer unit 12 temporarily holds the form image input to the form image input unit 11. Thus, when a plurality of forms having the same format (layout) are input, the plurality of form images can be temporarily stored. Since the saved form image is unnecessary after the cutout image is created by the image cutout unit 15, it may be deleted.

  The determination area storage unit 13 holds the position information of the input determination area 1b (see FIG. 1B). This position information is input from the user by dragging the mouse on the form image.

  The form position correction unit 14 corrects the inclination and positional deviation of the form that occurs during image shooting for each form image stored in the form image buffer unit 12. With this correction, for example, even when the paper is input to the scanner with the paper surface tilted, the positions of the print characters and print lines of the same form form overlap with each other in the plurality of form images. Therefore, the user only has to input the position information of the determination area of the form of the predetermined format held in the determination area storage unit 13 once, and the position information of the plurality of determination areas on which the predetermined format is printed once. Can be specified together.

  The form position correction unit 14 recognizes the inclination of the straight line of the bit mark printed on the form in advance and corrects the inclination of the form as described in, for example, Patent Document 1. Further, the form position correcting unit 14 corrects the position deviation of the form by reading a symbol for specifying the position printed on the form, for example.

  For each form image whose position has been corrected by the form position correction unit 14, the image cutout unit 15 extracts a partial image located inside the outer frame 1c of the determination area for each determination area 1b of the handwritten mark in the form image. cut. Then, the image cutout unit 15 erases the characters printed on the inner frame 1a of the determination area as shown in FIG.

  The cut-out image buffer unit 16 temporarily holds the cut-out image created by the image cut-out unit 15 from which the print characters are erased. The stored cut image is unnecessary after the handwritten mark determination unit 17 determines the handwritten mark, and may be deleted.

  The handwritten mark determination unit 17 determines whether or not a handwritten mark is described for each cut image held by the cut image buffer unit 16. The determination is performed by measuring whether or not the number of black spots existing in the cut-out image is equal to or greater than a predetermined number.

The control unit 10 outputs the determination result of the handwritten mark. The following example is given as an output destination of the determination result.
Recording in the RAM of the handwritten mark identification device 9
-Input data to other devices such as business processing systems.
-Display on the display to inform the user of the presence or absence of handwritten marks.
-By printing on the mark sheet area on the same sheet as the form or on another sheet, it can be used for data input by the mark sheet of other devices.

  FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing processing of the handwritten mark identifying apparatus. This flowchart takes as input a plurality of forms created in the same format. When inputting a form created in a different format, the process shown in the flowchart of FIG. 3 may be executed multiple times for each format.

  The control unit 10 performs a loop for each form. Specifically, the I-th form is selected while increasing the loop variable I by 1 from 1 to the total number M of forms (S11). The form image input unit 11 inputs the I-th form image (S12) and temporarily stores it in the form image buffer unit 12. The form position correction unit 14 corrects the form position of the I-th form image (S13).

  The control unit 10 performs a loop for each determination area regarding the I-th form image. Specifically, the J-th determination area is selected while increasing the loop variable J by 1 from 1 to the total number N of determination areas included in the I-th form image (S14).

  The control unit 10 determines whether or not the position information of the Jth determination area has been registered (S15). If Yes in S15, the position information of the determination area is registered in the determination area storage unit 13 (S16). If No in S15, the position information of the registered determination area is read from the determination area storage unit 13 (S17). The image cutout unit 15 cuts out the Jth determination area from the Ith form image, deletes the print character from the cutout image (S18), and temporarily stores it in the cutout image buffer unit 16. In S18, the print character erasing process may be omitted.

  The handwritten mark determination unit 17 determines whether or not the number of black spots in the cut-out image is equal to or greater than a predetermined number (S19). If Yes in S19, it is determined that a handwritten mark exists in the Jth determination area (S20), and if No in S19, it is determined that no handwritten mark exists in the Jth determination area (S21). The control unit 10 outputs this determination result. Then, the loop of the loop variable J is terminated and the loop of the loop variable I is terminated.

It is explanatory drawing which shows an example of the form by which the handwritten mark regarding one Embodiment of this invention is overwritten. It is a block diagram of the handwritten mark identification apparatus regarding one Embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process of the handwritten mark identification apparatus regarding one Embodiment of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 9 Handwritten mark identification apparatus 10 Control part 11 Form image input part 12 Form image buffer part 13 Judgment area memory | storage part 14 Form position correction part 15 Image cut-out part 16 Cut-out image buffer part 17 Handwritten mark judgment part

Claims (4)

A handwritten mark identifying device for identifying a handwritten mark written on a printed character printed on a monochrome printed form,
A form image input unit for receiving input of the form image;
A determination area for storing position information of the determination area sandwiched between an inner frame of the determination area surrounding the print character on the form image and an outer frame of the determination area located outside the inner frame of the determination area A storage unit;
An image cutout unit for cutting out a partial image surrounded by an outer frame of the determination area from the form image;
A handwritten mark determination unit that determines whether or not a handwritten mark is written in the determination region according to the number of colored points in the partial image after the image cutout unit has processed;
An output unit that outputs a determination result of the handwritten mark determination unit. The handwritten mark identifying apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a form position correcting unit that corrects an inclination or a positional deviation of the form with respect to the form image input to the form image input unit. The handwritten mark identifying apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the determination area storage unit has a rectangular shape for an inner frame of the determination area and an outer frame of the determination area. A handwritten mark identification program for identifying a handwritten mark written on a printed character printed on a monochrome printed form,
Computer
A form image input unit for receiving input of the form image;
A determination area for storing position information of the determination area sandwiched between an inner frame of the determination area surrounding the print character on the form image and an outer frame of the determination area located outside the inner frame of the determination area Storage unit,
An image cutout unit that cuts out a partial image surrounded by an outer frame of the determination area from the form image;
A handwritten mark determination unit that determines whether or not a handwritten mark is written in the determination region according to the number of colored points in the partial image after the image cutout unit has processed;
The handwritten mark identification program for functioning as an output part which outputs the judgment result of the handwritten mark judging part.

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