JPH0239380A - Image processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To execute high speed processing by reading out an image which is stored, decoding this image which is read out, and executing a linear density conversion processing to the image which is brought to decoding processing. CONSTITUTION:A CPU supplies an image of everyone scanning line supplied from an optical disk device 22 to a compressing and expanding circuit 50 through an interface circuit 36, a system bus 30, a buffer memory area 40a, an image bus 32 and an internal bus 56. As a result, image information which is brought to band expansion processing by an MR reverse conversion by the compression and expansion circuit 50 is supplied to an enlarging and reducing circuit 46 through the internal bus 56. The CPU 34 confirms linear density of an image which is retrieved from an optical disk 20 by linear density data which is supplied to retrieval information, and also, confirms linear density of printing from a scanner device 18, and determines an enlargement rate and a reduction rate. Subsequently, the CPU 34 brings an image signal from the compressing and expanding circuit 50 to enlargement/reduction processing, namely, linear density conversion processing in accordance with its enlargement ratio and reduction ratio by the enlarging/reducing circuit 46.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Object of the Invention] (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention relates to an image processing device such as an image filing device that performs image registration, search, etc., for example.

(Prior Art) Recently, images such as documents, which are generated in large quantities, are read by optical two-dimensional scanning using a two-dimensional scanning device (scanner).
Image filing devices have been put into practical use that store the read images on an optical disk, search for and read out any stored image, and output it in a form that can be viewed by an output device such as a CRT display device or a printer.

In such devices, if the linear density of the image retrieved from the optical disk or the linear density of the image supplied from the scanner device differs from the linear density printed by the printer, a linear density conversion method consisting of an enlargement/reduction circuit is used. It has been proposed that a circuit converts the linear density of an image retrieved from an optical disk to match the linear density of a printout.

In this case, four devices are connected to the image bus, namely the buffer memory, compression/expansion circuit, linear density conversion circuit, and page memory, so if the image bus is time-divisionally controlled for the four devices, High-speed image processing becomes impossible, and the performance of the compression/expansion circuit and the linear density conversion circuit becomes inadequate. For this reason, controlling four devices for the image bus would be difficult in terms of circuitry and increase in scale, so the configuration is such that three devices can be controlled for the image bus. Therefore, the image read from the optical disk is stored in a page memory via a buffer memory, an image bus, a compression/decompression circuit, and an image bus, and the encoded data stored in this page memory is transferred to an image bus, a linear density conversion circuit, and a page memory. It is being considered that linear density conversion at the time of retrieval is performed by a two-step process of storing information in a page memory via an image bus.

However, this type of method has the disadvantage that high-speed processing cannot be performed because two stages of processing are required when linear density conversion is performed during a search.

(Problem to be Solved by the Invention) As mentioned above, when performing linear density conversion during a search, two-step processing is required, so high-speed processing cannot be performed. An object of the present invention is to provide an image processing device that can perform high-speed processing when performing linear density conversion.

[Configuration of the Invention (Means for Solving the Problems) The image processing device of the present invention includes a storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored, a reading means for reading out the images stored in the storage means, and processing means for decoding the image read out by the reading means and for performing linear density conversion processing on the decoded image.

The image processing device of the present invention also includes a storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored, a reading means for reading out the images stored in the storage means, and a decoding means for decoding the images read out by the reading means. It is comprised of a processing means having a decoding means and a conversion means for performing linear density conversion on the decoded image, and a bus connecting the decoding means and the conversion means.

The image processing apparatus of the present invention also includes an optical storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored, a reading means for reading out the images stored in the optical storage means, and a decoding means for decoding the images read out by the reading means. a processing means having a decoding means for converting the image into a linear density image, and a conversion means for performing linear density conversion on the decoded image; a bus connecting the decoding means and the conversion means; and a bus for connecting the decoding means and the conversion means; It consists of a page memory that stores images.

(Operation) This invention reads an image stored in a storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored, decodes the read image, and applies linear density to the decoded image. It is designed to perform conversion processing.

Further, the present invention reads out an image stored in a storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored, decodes the read image by the encoding means, and applies the encoded image to the encoded image. The converting means performs linear density conversion processing, and the encoding means and the converting means are connected by a bus.

Further, the present invention reads an image stored in an optical storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored, decodes the read image by the encoding means, and converts the decoded image into a Then, the conversion means performs linear density conversion processing,
The converted image is stored in a page memory, and the encoding means and converting means are connected via a bus.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 shows an image filing device as an image processing device of the present invention. That is, the image filing device includes a control module 10, a memory module 12, an image processing module 14, and a communication control module 1.
6. Consists of a scanner device 18, a destination disk 20, an optical disk device 22, a keyboard 23, a CRT display device 24, a printer device 25, a magnetic disk 26, a magnetic disk device 27, a mouse 29, a system bus 30, and an Oyohi image bus 32. ing.

The control module 10 includes a CPU 34 that performs various controls for image storage, search, and editing processing, and an interface circuit 36 that connects the optical disk device 22, magnetic disk device 27, and CPU 34.

The CPU 34 also includes a keyboard 23 and a mouse 2.
9 is connected. When printing an image retrieved from the optical disc 2o or an image supplied from the scanner device 18 using the printer device 25, when the linear densities of the images are different, the CPU 34 decompresses the image in the buffer memory 40a using a compression/decompression circuit 5o, which will be described later. (Decoding) processing, followed by linear density conversion processing in an enlarging/reducing circuit 46 to be described later, and storing the image in the page memory 4o, and outputting the image stored in the page memory 4o to the printer device 25.

The memory module 12 includes a main memory 38 for storing various control programs such as image storage, search, and editing, management information, etc., and a page memory as an image memory having a storage capacity corresponding to images of several pages of an A4-sized document. 40.
and a display memory 42 as a display interface.
and a display control section 44. A buffer memory area 40a is provided in a part of the page memory 4°. Writing and reading in this buffer memory area 40a are controlled by a counter (not shown). The page memory 4o is a memory that temporarily stores, for example, images stored on the optical disc 20 and images read from the optical disc 2o. The display memory 42 also stores images that are actually displayed in a display window (not shown) in the CRT display device 24, that is, images in the page memory 40, such as enlargement, reduction, rotation, insertion, etc.
Alternatively, an image that has been subjected to black and white inversion or the like is stored.

The image processing module 14 includes an enlargement/reduction circuit 46 that enlarges/reduces the image and also converts the linear density, an aspect conversion circuit 48 that performs image rotation processing by converting the image vertically and horizontally, and an image compression circuit ( a compression/expansion circuit (CODEC) 50 that performs encoding and decoding processing (reducing redundancy) and decompression (returning reduced redundancy);
a scanner interface 52 for the scanner device 18;
a printer interface 54 for the printer device 25;
and an internal bus 56.

As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, this internal bus 56 includes the enlargement/reduction circuit 46, the vertical/horizontal conversion circuit 48, the compression/expansion circuit 50. It connects the scanner interface 52, printer interface 54, and image bus 32. This allows the internal bus 56 to expand/
The reduction circuit 46 and the compression/expansion circuit 5o are connected, and the enlargement/expansion circuit 5o is
Processing between the reduction circuit 46 and the compression/expansion circuit 50 is carried out by the image bus 3.
2, and it can be seen from the image bus 32 that one device is connected. As a result, during a search, the enlargement/reduction circuit 46 and the compression/expansion circuit 5o can be operated in series.

The communication control module 16 is connected to a LAN, for example.
Communication interface 5 such as nP roeessor)
It is composed of 8. The communication control module 16 also includes an FCP (Facsimile Connection Mechanism) UCP (Universal Communication System) that is connected via an interface with an external device such as a personal computer.
tlon processor) may also be provided. This communication control module 16 transfers the search information transmitted via the communication line to the main memory 3.
8, or transmits an image corresponding to the transmitted search information. Further, it supplies images stored on the optical disc 20 to the page memory 40, and also supplies search information corresponding to the images to the main memory 38.

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

However, memory module 12 and image processing module 1
4 is connected to the internal bus 56 of the image processing module 14 and the image bus 32, as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3.

The scanner device 18 is, for example, a two-dimensional scanning device, and is a document (
By scanning the document (document) two-dimensionally with a laser beam, an electrical signal corresponding to the image on the document is obtained.

The optical disc device 22 has a linear density of 8 lines/mm and 16 lines/mm when read by the scanner device 18.

200ppi (paper bar inch), 400 ppi
i images and the like are sequentially stored on the optical disc 20. It also searches the optical disc 20 for an image corresponding to search information specified using the keyboard 23 or the like.

The keyboard 23 is used to input unique search information corresponding to the image to be stored on the optical disc 20 and various operation commands such as storage, search, and editing processing.

Further, the mouse 29 can be used, for example, by arbitrarily moving a cursor (not shown) displayed on a display window on the CRT display device 24 in vertical and horizontal directions, and by giving an instruction at a desired position, the cursor is positioned. Display contents (various operating modes, area designation or icons for editing images).

etc.) to select or instruct.

The CRT display device (cathode ray tube display device) 24 is
Images read by the scanner device 18 and the optical disc 2
The image searched from 0 is displayed. This CR
The display area for displaying images of the T-display device 24 is
It is a multi-window type display device that can display four images simultaneously using a maximum of four windows (not shown). Editing processes such as enlarging, reducing, rotating, scrolling, etc. are performed on the images displayed in each display window independently.

The printer device 25 prints images read by the scanner device 18 and images retrieved from the optical disk 20 or CRT.
The image displayed on the display device 24 is printed out (
Hard copy), for example 200ppi
(approximately 7.87 lines/rHm) or 400p
It prints at a linear density of pi (approximately 15.75 lines/mm).

The magnetic disk device 27 stores various control programs on a magnetic disk 28 attached to the magnetic disk device 27, and also stores an optical disk 2o in which search information input from the keyboard 23 and images corresponding to this search information are stored. It stores search data including the above storage address, image size, and linear density data corresponding to the scanner device used to store the image.

Next, in such a configuration, a case will be described in which an image retrieved from the optical disk 2o is printed out by the printer device 25, with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG.'TS3. First, a search mode is set using the keyboard 23, and search information corresponding to the image desired to be searched is input.

The CPU 34 sequentially compares and collates the input search information with the search information stored on the magnetic disk 26, and sequentially checks whether or not search information that matches the input search information is stored. As a result, the CPU 34 reads out the document number of the matching search information from the magnetic disk 26 and stores it in the main memory 38. Next, the CPU 34 displays the list of document numbers stored in the main memory 38 on the CRT display device 24. Next, desired search information is selected from the search information displayed on the CRT display device 24 using the keyboard 23. The address corresponding to this selected search information is read.

The CPU 34 calculates a physical track address and a physical sector address corresponding to this address, and uses these addresses to cause the optical disc device 22 to reproduce images from the optical disc 20 (STI).

The CPU 34 also supplies the image for each scanning line supplied from the optical disk device 22 to the compression/expansion circuit 50 via the interface circuit 36, system bus 30, buffer memory area 40a, image bus 32, and internal bus 56. (Sr1). As a result, the compression/expansion circuit 50
The image information subjected to band expansion processing (Sr3) by MR inverse conversion is supplied to the enlargement/reduction circuit 46 via the internal bus 56. The CPU 34 confirms the linear density of the image retrieved from the optical disk 20 using the linear density data added to the search information, and also confirms the linear density of the print from the scanner device 18, and determines the enlargement rate and reduction rate. (Sr1)
Next, the CPU 34 subjects the image signal from the compression/expansion circuit 50 to an enlargement/reduction process, that is, a linear density conversion process, in accordance with the enlargement/reduction ratio in the enlargement/reduction circuit 46 (Sr1).

For example, if the linear density of the image retrieved from the optical disc 20 is 8 lines/mm and the linear density of the print from the scanner device 18 is 200 ppi (7.87 lines/mm), the image information is displayed at a magnification of 98%. In addition, the line density of the image retrieved from the optical disk 20 is 16 lines/mm, and the line density of the image printed from the scanner device 18 is 400 ppi.
(15,75 lines/mm), image information is reduced at a magnification of 98%.

However, if the linear density of the image retrieved from the optical disc 20 and the linear density printed by the scanner device 18 are the same (Sr1
), the image information subjected to band expansion processing by MR inverse conversion in the compression/expansion circuit 50 is stored in the page memory 40 via the internal bus 56 and the image bus 32 (Sr1).

The image information whose linear density has been converted is stored in the page memory 40 via the internal bus 56 and the image bus 32 (Sr
1). The images stored in the page memory 40 are stored in the display memory 42 and displayed on the CRT display device 24.

An instruction to print out the image displayed on the CRT display device 24 is given using the keyboard 23, for example. The CPU 34 outputs the image information in the page memory 40 to the printer device 25 via the image bus 32, internal bus 56, and printer interface 54.

As mentioned above, when searching mm-based images stored on an optical disk and printing them with a printer, the image read from the optical disk by the interface circuit is compressed and decompressed via the buffer memory, image bus, and internal bus. The expanded image is guided to the circuit and is decompressed (decoded), and the expanded image is scaled via the internal bus and subjected to linear density conversion processing.The linear density converted image is sent to the internal bus and the image bus. The image stored on the optical disk is led to the page memory and stored therein, and the stored image is output to the printer device through the image bus, internal bus, and printer interface. Even if this device, for example a printer, handles images with a linear density in the inch system (units of inches), the code data stored in the mm system will be decoded. It is possible to convert a mm system image to an inch system image by performing linear density conversion while converting the data into image data. can be processed at high speed.

In the above embodiment, a case has been described in which a mm-based image is changed to an inch-based image, but the present invention is not limited to this, and an inch-based image may be changed to a mm-based image.

[Effects of the Invention] As described in detail above, according to the present invention, it is possible to provide an image processing device that can perform high-speed processing when performing linear density conversion during a search.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

The drawings show one embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically showing the main parts of the configuration, FIG. 2 is a block diagram schematically showing the entire configuration, and FIG. 3 is an explanation of the operation. This is a flowchart for 18... Scanner device, 20... Optical disc, 22
... Optical disk device, 23 ... Keyboard, 24.
... CRT display device, 25 ... printer device, 27 ... magnetic disk device, 29 ... mouse, 3
0...System bus, 32...Image bus, 34...
・CPU, 36...Interface circuit, 38...
・Main memory, 40...Page memory, 40a...
・Buffer memory, 46...Enlargement/reduction circuit, 50・
...Compression/expansion circuit, 54...Printer interface. 2nd Figure 1 4r: Tobehe

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) A storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored; a reading means for reading out the images stored in the storage means; and a decoding process for decoding the images read by the reading means. 1. An image processing device comprising: processing means for performing linear density conversion processing on a converted image; (2) a storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored; a reading means for reading out the images stored in the storage means; a decoding means for decoding the images read out by the reading means; An image processing apparatus comprising: a processing means having a conversion means for performing linear density conversion on a decoded image; and a bus connecting the decoding means and the conversion means. (3) Optical storage means in which a plurality of images are encoded and stored; reading means for reading out the images stored in the optical storage means; and decoding means for decoding the images read out by the reading means. and a converting means for performing linear density conversion on the decoded image, a bus connecting the decoding means and the converting means, and storing the image converted by the converting means. An image processing device characterized by comprising: a page memory for storing data;