JPH05274368A - Image storage device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To simplify the registration processing by dispensing with an operation of a retrieval key and an input key, etc. CONSTITUTION:At the time of inputting a retrieval code (a title and a keyword, etc.) of image information stored in an optical disk 19, the image information containing a character which becomes the retrieval code is displayed on a CRT display device 24, a character part which becomes the retrieval code on a display screen is designated as to its area by a mouse 29, a partial image of this designated area is enlarged and displayed by an enlarging/reducing circuit 46, whether the character which becomes the retrieval code can be designated correctly or not is confirmed, and thereafter, the designated area is subjected to character recognition in a character recognizing part 39 and becomes the retrieval code.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image storage device such as an image filing device for registering images.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, an image such as a large amount of documents is read by a scanner (two-dimensional scanning device), the read image is stored in an optical disk, and any stored image is searched and read out. Output it to an output device, eg C
2. Description of the Related Art An image filing device which outputs an RT display device or a recording device in a visible state has been put into practical use.

In such an apparatus, a title is added to the image information registered on the optical disc, for example, in document units. In this case, the image information is input using a scanner, and the title is input manually using a keyboard. However, if there are multiple copies of image information (documents) to be registered, and you have to create a title for each document, for example,
It had a very poor workability.

Therefore, a method of inputting a title without using a keyboard has been proposed. This method displays on a CRT display an image containing characters to be a title in an image (document) read by a scanner,
Specify the character area of the displayed image with a mouse, etc.
By recognizing characters in this area, the title is obtained.

However, if the characters to be used as the title displayed on the CRT display are small in the designated area or the character spacing is narrow, the desired character area cannot be designated normally, resulting in an error. Sometimes the characters in the image area were recognized.

[0006]

As described above, in the title inputting method by character recognition in which an area on an image (document) is specified, the character to be a title cannot be normally specified depending on the state of the character. There was a problem. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an image storage device capable of easily and accurately designating a desired character on an image.

[0007]

The image storage device of the present invention includes a supply means for supplying image information, a display means for displaying the image information supplied by the supply means, and an image displayed by the display means. From among the above, a designating means for designating a partial image to be used as search information for searching the image and a partial image of the search information designated by the designating means are enlarged at a predetermined enlargement ratio to display means. A magnifying display means for displaying, a propriety designating means for designating suitability as search information for the partial image magnified and displayed by the magnifying display means, and the partial image if designated by the suitability designating means. It is provided with a recognition means for recognizing as a character or a code, and a storage means for storing the search information recognized by the recognition means and the image information supplied by the supply means.

The image storage device of the present invention selects the above-mentioned image from the supply means for supplying the image information, the display means for displaying the image information supplied by the supply means, and the image displayed by the display means. Specifying means for specifying a partial image to be used as search information for searching for, a magnifying display means for magnifying and displaying a partial image of the search information specified by the specifying means, and the magnified and displayed part. The suitability designating means for designating whether or not the image is suitable as search information, the redesignating means for designating again by the designating means for the partial image when the suitability is designated by the suitability designating means, and the suitability designating means. When it is designated as appropriate, the recognition means for recognizing the partial image as a character or code, the search information recognized by this recognition means, and the image information supplied by the supply means are recorded. And a storage means for.

[0009]

According to the present invention, the image information supplied by the supply means is displayed, a partial image to be used as search information for searching from the displayed images is designated, and the designated partial image is predetermined. It is enlarged and displayed at the enlargement ratio, and whether or not it is appropriate as search information is specified from this enlarged display. When it is specified as appropriate, the partial image is recognized as a character or code, and the search information recognized as this character or code is specified. And the supplied image information is stored.

According to the present invention, the image information supplied by the supply means is displayed, a partial image to be used as search information for searching from the displayed images is designated, and the designated partial image is enlarged at an arbitrary enlargement ratio. Enlarge and display, and specify whether the specified partial image is suitable as search information, if it is specified as no, specify the partial image again, and if it is specified as appropriate, the partial image is displayed as text. Or the code, and the search information recognized as the character or the code and the supplied image information are stored.

[0011]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows a configuration example of an image storage device of the present invention, for example, an electronic filing device. That is, the electronic filing device includes a control module 10, a memory module 12, an image processing module 14, a communication control module 16, a scanner device 18, and an optical disc 19.
The optical disk device 20, the keyboard 23, the CRT display device 24, the printer device 25, the magnetic disk 26 and the magnetic disk device 27, the mouse 29, the system bus 30, and the image bus 32 are included.

The control module 10 includes a CPU 34 that performs various controls for storing, retrieving and editing images.
And the optical disk device 20, the magnetic disk device 27 and C
The interface circuit 36 connects the PU 34. A keyboard 23 and a mouse 29 are connected to the CPU 34.

The memory module 12 includes a main memory 38 for storing various control programs for image storage, retrieval, editing, etc., management information, etc., a character recognition section 39 for recognizing image characters, and several pages of A4 size document. A page memory 40 as an image memory having a storage capacity corresponding to an image,
It is composed of a display memory 42 as a display interface, a display controller 44, and the like. A buffer memory area 40a is provided in a part of the page memory 40. The page memory 40 is, for example, the optical disc 19
The memory is a memory for temporarily storing the image stored in the optical disc 19 and the image read from the optical disc 19.

The display memory 42 is for temporarily storing an image displayed by the CRT display device 24. In the display memory 42, an image actually displayed in the display window of the CRT display device 24, for example, an image from the page memory 40 or an image from the buffer memory 40a is enlarged, reduced, rotated, inserted or inserted. An image subjected to black-and-white reversal or the like is stored. The display control unit 44 controls the display processing of the CRT display device 24 and the like.

The image processing module 14 includes an enlarging / reducing circuit 46 for enlarging and reducing an image, a vertical / horizontal converting circuit 48 for rotating an image, and an encoding process for compressing an image (reducing redundancy). A compression / decompression circuit (CODEC) 50 for performing a decoding process for applying and decompressing (recovering reduced redundancy), a scanner interface 52 for the scanner device 18, a printer interface 54 for the printer device 25, and scaling. The internal bus 56 connects the circuit 46 and the vertical / horizontal conversion circuit 48, the compression / expansion circuit 50, the scanner interface 52, and the printer interface 54. The compression / decompression circuit 50 uses the MH (Modified Huffman) method, the MR (Modified Read) method, or the like to perform band compression,
Alternatively, band expansion is performed.

The communication control module 16 is composed of a communication interface 58 such as a BCP (Bus Communication Processor) connected to a local area network (Local Area Network). Further, the communication control module 16 is connected to an external device such as an FCP (facsimile connection mechanism) or a personal computer through an interface, and a UCP (Universal Communication Process).
r) may be provided.

The system bus 30 is a bus for control signals of various devices and connects the control module 10 with the memory module 12, the image processing module 14, and the communication control module 16. The image bus 32 is an image bus, and connects the memory module 12, the image processing module 14, and the communication control module 16.

The scanner device 18 is, for example, a two-dimensional scanning device and obtains an electric signal according to an image on the original by scanning the original (document) two-dimensionally with a laser beam.

The optical disk device 20 includes a scanner device 18
The images read in step 1 are sequentially stored in the optical disc 19. The optical disc 19 is searched for an image corresponding to the search code designated by the keyboard 23 or the like.

The keyboard 23 is used to input a unique search code corresponding to an image stored in the optical disk 19 and various operation commands for storage, search, edit processing and the like. In addition, the mouse 29 moves a cursor (not shown) displayed on the display window of the CRT display device 24, for example, vertically and horizontally, and gives an instruction at a desired position so that the cursor is positioned. The display contents (various operation modes, title or area designation or icon for image editing, etc.) are selected or designated.

The CRT display device (cathode ray tube display device) 24 displays the image read by the scanner device 18 and the image retrieved from the optical disk 19. Icons and the like are displayed at the upper end, the lower end, and the right end on the display window of the CRT display device 24.

The printer device 25 prints out (hardcopy) the image read by the scanner device 18, the image retrieved from the optical disk 19 or the image displayed on the CRT display device 24.

The magnetic disk device 27 stores various control programs on the magnetic disk 26 mounted on the magnetic disk device 27, and also stores a search code input from the keyboard 23 and an image corresponding to the search code. It stores search data (search information) including a storage address on the optical disk 19, an image size, a search frequency, and the like.

The search data is managed by a document management table, which is a title management table 26a, as shown in FIG.
Page management table 26b and record management table 2
6c. In the title management table 26a, one document number is stored for each search code (image name) consisting of a plurality of search keys. In the page management table 26b, record numbers are stored page by page of one document, and one record number is stored corresponding to each page. The record management table 26c stores, for each record number, a storage address (storage start position) of an image on the optical disc 19, a document size (image size), image attributes such as compression method and resolution, and a search frequency (access frequency). Has been done. The storage address is a logical address, and a physical track address and a physical sector address are calculated from this at the time of access.

Next, the operation of image storage and retrieval processing in the electronic filing apparatus having such a configuration will be described. First, regarding the image storage processing, FIG.
This will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. For example, now, the keyboard 23 is selectively set in the registration mode.

Next, the original is set on the scanner device 18, and the CPU 34 operates the optical disk device 20 and the scanner device 18. The scanner device 18 two-dimensionally scans and photoelectrically converts an image of a set document or the like. The line information of the photoelectrically converted image is sequentially stored in the page memory 40. The image stored in the page memory 40 is stored in the display memory 42, and the display controller 44 displays the stored contents of the display memory 42 on the CRT display device 24.

Next, the search code (title, keyword, etc.) of the image stored in the optical disk 19 is input. Enter this search code using the keyboard 23 or mouse 2
9 performed. Conventionally, the search code is input by the keyboard 23, but as described above, the keyboard operation is not always good in workability.

Now, as an embodiment according to the present invention, a search code input by the mouse 29 will be described. That is, for example, a document shown in FIG. 4A is read by the scanner device 18. As shown in FIG. 4B, the image of the read document is displayed on the CRT display device 24, and the area (within the dotted line) is designated by the mouse 29 as the portion to be the title. The designated area is enlarged in the enlargement / reduction circuit 46, and this image data is stored in the display memory 42, and then is displayed in the area shown by the solid line frame on the CRT display device 24 as shown in FIG. It is displayed (enlarged display).

It is confirmed whether the enlarged and displayed image is not suitable as a title, or whether there is any inconvenience such as characters not being stored in the area. If there is any inconvenience, the area is designated again. . If it is confirmed that the image specified in the area is suitable for the title,
When the title input execution key or the like is pressed, the designated area (inside the dotted line) is character-recognized by the character recognition unit 39 and is input as a title.

The enlarged display may be automatically enlarged, or may be selected and enlarged. The enlargement ratio may be set in advance or may be selected each time. The point is that the desired title can be obtained correctly.

This search code is composed of a plurality of search keys, and the contents of the items of this search key are set in advance. For items that are preset as items of this search key,
By displaying the image on the CRT display device 24, the area of the character (code or the like) to be the search key is designated by the mouse 29, the character is recognized by the character recognition unit 39, and the character is input as the search code. In this way, the search code is input by designating the area for each item.

The CPU 34 checks the validity of the input search code in accordance with a predefined format and compares it with the search code registered on the optical disk 19 to check the double registration.
The input search code is stored in the main memory 38 according to the result of this check.

When the displayed image is satisfactory, a memory key (not shown) is input. Then the CPU
34 is a compression / decompression circuit (CODEC) 50 for each line information of the image stored in the page memory 40,
Coding processing is performed by band compression using a well-known MR (Modified Read) method or the like. The encoded image is supplied to the optical disc device 20 and stored in the optical disc 19.

When the storage of the image on the optical disk 19 is completed, the CPU 34 stores a logical address determined from the physical track address and the physical sector address where the image is stored,
The image length represented by the block length, the image attribute, etc. are stored in the main memory 38 in association with the search code. Then, the CPU 34 supplies the search data stored in the main memory 38 to the magnetic disk device 27. As a result, the magnetic disk device 27 stores the supplied search data in the respective tables 26a to 26c in the magnetic disk 26.

Next, the search processing of the image stored in the optical disk 19 will be described. First, the search mode is set by the keyboard 23, and the search code corresponding to the image to be searched is input. The CPU 34 sequentially compares and collates the input search code with the search code stored in the title management table 26a of the magnetic disk 26, and sequentially checks whether or not the search code that matches the input search code is stored. Then pull out the applicable document number. As a result, the CPU 34 stores the extracted candidate document numbers in the main memory 38.

Then, the CPU 34 refers to the document numbers of the candidates in the main memory 38, creates a list (search code) of the relevant documents with the data read from the title management table 26a, and uses the CRT display device 24. To display. With this display, if the document for which the operator is to be searched cannot be found, the search code is input again. If found, the image to be searched is specified from the list (specified by the document number, etc.) and the search execution is instructed.

The CPU 34 assigns the record number corresponding to the designated image to the page management table 26b of the magnetic disk 26.
, A logical address corresponding to the read record number is read from the record management table 26c in the magnetic disk 26, and a physical track address and a physical sector address corresponding to this address are calculated,
An image including the search code from the optical disc 19 is reproduced by the optical disc device 20 using these addresses.

The CPU 34 also supplies the image (compression information) for each scanning line supplied from the optical disk device 20 to the compression / expansion circuit 50, performs band expansion processing, and sequentially supplies the page memory 40. The image stored in the page memory 40 is reduced by the enlargement / reduction circuit 46 and output to the display memory 42, and the image is stored in the display memory 42. Therefore, the display control unit 44 controls the display memory 4
The stored contents of No. 2 are displayed on the CRT display device 24.

As described above, according to the above embodiment,
By specifying the title of the image displayed on the CRT display device or the part you want to use as a keyword with the mouse, and by enlarging it so that even small characters and narrow character intervals can be identified, it is possible to accurately determine whether the desired character range can be specified. Since it can be confirmed, it is possible to eliminate the error in the designated area with the mouse.

Further, by designating the character range on the image with the mouse, the character in the area is recognized, and it becomes a title or a keyword. Therefore, the operation of the input key is not necessary and the registration process can be simplified. You can

By storing the area designated by the mouse, the designated area such as a standard document can be stored in the stored area without using the mouse every time. It is also possible to recognize characters and input them as titles or keywords.

[0043]

As described above in detail, according to the present invention, it is possible to provide an image storage device in which the operation of the search key, the input key, etc. is unnecessary and the registration process can be simplified.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram schematically showing a configuration of an image filing device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a storage example of a document management table.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart for explaining a recording operation.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining area designation by a mouse.

[Explanation of symbols]

18 ... Scanner device, 19 ... Optical disc, 20 ... Optical disc device, 23 ... Keyboard, 24 ... CRT display device, 25 ... Printer device, 26 ... Magnetic disc, 2
6a ... Title management table, 26b ... Page management table, 26c ... Record management table, 27 ... Magnetic disk device, 34 ... CPU, 38 ... Main memory, 40 ... Page memory, 40a ... Buffer memory, 42 ... Display memory, 44 ... Display control unit, 46 ... Enlargement / reduction circuit, 50 ... Compression / expansion circuit.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A supply means for supplying image information, a display means for displaying the image information supplied by the supply means, and a search for retrieving the image from among the images displayed by the display means. Designating means for designating a partial image to be used as information, enlarged display means for enlarging the partial image of the search information designated by the designating means at a predetermined enlargement ratio and displaying the enlarged image on the display means, and the enlarged display means. A suitability designating unit for designating suitability as the search information for the partial image enlarged and displayed, and a recognizing unit for recognizing the partial image as a character or a code when the suitability designating unit designates suitability. An image storage device comprising: storage means for storing the search information recognized by the recognition means and the image information supplied by the supply means. 2. A supply means for supplying image information, a display means for displaying the image information supplied by the supply means, and a search for retrieving the image from among the images displayed by the display means. Designating means for designating a partial image to be used as information, magnifying display means for magnifying and displaying the partial image of the search information designated by the designating means, and the magnified and displayed partial image are suitable as search information. If the suitability designating means designates whether or not the suitability is specified, and if the suitability designating means designates no, the designating means for designating the partial image again designates the suitability again, and if the suitability designating means designates suitability. Includes a recognition unit that recognizes the partial image as a character or a code, and a storage unit that stores the search information recognized by the recognition unit and the image information supplied by the supply unit. Image storage apparatus characterized by Bei was.