JPH05276396A - Picture information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide a device which reduces the capacity storage for one picture and efficiently stores picture information by providing a coding means which substitutes character information with code information and a compressing means which compresses image information other than character information substituted with code information. CONSTITUTION:Stored picture information has character information extracted by a character recognition device 14, and character information is substituted with code information. The code information is sent to a second non-volatile storage device 15 and stored in the code information storage area together with its position information. Meanwhile, picture information after extraction of character information is converted to the information of only images and compressed by a compressing/expanding circuit 18. This image information is sent to the second non-volatile storage device 15. It is stored in the image information storage area, and the sequential number added to designated retrieval information and the code information storage place number in the code information storage area of stored code information are respectively stored.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image information processing apparatus such as an electronic filing apparatus capable of storing a document image or reading and displaying the stored document image.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, an electronic filing apparatus has been put into practical use, which reads a document image and files it on a nonvolatile storage medium such as a hard disk or an optical disk. This electronic filing device is to capture image information read from a document as one piece of image information, and compress and store the entire image information.

However, in the conventional art, not only the original image information such as pictures and figures but also character information such as alphabets and kanji are processed as image information, so that the storage capacity for one image is large. There was such a problem.

[0004]

As described above, in the past, there is a drawback that the storage capacity for one image is large and the storage efficiency is poor.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an image information processing apparatus capable of reducing the storage capacity for one image and efficiently storing image information.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, in the image information processing apparatus of the present invention, a reading means for reading image information from a document in which character information and image information are mixed, Coding means for replacing the character information in the image information read by the reading means with code information, compression means for compressing image information other than the character information replaced with code information by the coding means, and this compression The image information compressed by the means, and the storage means for storing the code information replaced by the encoding means and the position information on the image information in association with each other.

Further, in the image information processing apparatus of the present invention, the reading means for reading the image information from the original document in which the character information and the image information are mixed, and the character information in the image information read by the reading means. To code information, compression means for compressing image information other than the character information replaced by the code information by the coding means, image information compressed by the compression means, and the coding means. Storing means for storing the code information replaced by the above and the position information on the image information in association with each other, the image information stored in the storing means, and the reading means for reading the code information corresponding to the image information. A decompression means for decompressing the image information read by the reading means, and an image decompressed by the decompression means. Di information, and an output means for outputting the image information Deki by synthesizing the code information read by said reading means in accordance with the position information.

[0008]

According to the present invention, since the degree of compression of the image information can be increased by the means described above, more image information can be stored.

[0009]

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 schematic configuration of an electronic filing device according to the present invention.

This electronic filing device is a CPU (Central Processing Unit) that controls the entire system.
11, image reading device (reading means) 12, first non-volatile storage device 13, character recognition device (coding means) 14, second non-volatile storage device (storage means) 15, display device (output means) 16 , An input device 17, a compression / expansion circuit (compression means / expansion means) 18, and the like.
The image reading device 12 is composed of, for example, a scanner, and optically scans a document to obtain an electric signal corresponding to image information. First non-volatile storage device 13
Is composed of a RAM, for example, and stores image information read by the image reading device 12 and the like. The character recognition device 14 extracts character information from the image information stored in the first non-volatile storage device 13, recognizes it, and generates code information.

The second non-volatile storage device 15 is composed of, for example, a hard disk device and stores (filing) the image information read by the image reading device 12. This second non-volatile storage device 15
Has two storage areas, for example, a code information storage area and an image information storage area. Display device 1
6 is composed of, for example, a CRT display,
The image information read by the image reading device 12 is displayed. The input device 17 is composed of, for example, a keyboard, and is used to input operation instructions and unique search information attached to image information to be searched. The compression / expansion circuit 18 compresses or expands the image information (image information) in which the white image pattern is embedded in the character information portion. FIG. 2 shows the configuration of the code information storage area 15a in the second nonvolatile storage device 15 described above.

The code information storage area 15a indicates, for example, the code information replaced by the character recognition device 14, the position information indicating the position of the character information corresponding to the code information on the image information, and the storage position of the code information. The code information storage location numbers according to the serial numbers are stored in association with each other. Figure 3
Shows the configuration of the image information storage area 15b in the second non-volatile storage device 15 described above.

The image information storage area 15b corresponds to, for example, the image information compressed by the compression / expansion circuit 18, the sequential number added to the search information of the image information corresponding to this image information, and the image information. Code information storage area 15 for code information
It is composed of a plurality of storage units for storing the code information storage location number indicating the storage location in a. Next, the operation of the above configuration will be described.

First, at the time of filing, an instruction to start registration is input from the input device 17. Then, the image reading device 12 reads the image information as shown in FIG. 4 from the document. This read image information is the first
Stored in the non-volatile storage device 13.

The stored image information is used as the character recognition device 1.
4 is used to extract character information as shown in FIG. Then, each character information is recognized by, for example, a pattern matching method, and is replaced with code information.

The coded code information is sent to the second non-volatile storage device 15. Then, it is stored at the position of the predetermined code information storage location number in the code information storage area 15a together with the position information.

On the other hand, the image information after the extraction of the character information is converted into the information only for the image as shown in FIG. 6 by embedding the white image pattern in that portion on the memory address. The compression / expansion circuit 18
Thus, compression processing is performed by, for example, the MR method.

The image information which has been imaged and further compressed is sent to the second non-volatile memory device 15. Then, it is stored at a predetermined position in the image information storage area 15b, and the sequential number attached to the designated search information and the code information storage location number in the code information storage area 15a of the previously stored code information are stored. To be done. The above-described sequential number is managed in the CPU 11, for example, in association with each piece of search information. Thus, the filing of image information, that is, the registration of image information on the hard disk is completed.

Subsequently, when searching the image information filed in the above registration, a search instruction and search information of the image information to be read are input from the input device 17. Then, the image information storage area 15b of the second non-volatile storage device 15 is searched by the sequential number of the search information.

As a result, the image information corresponding to the sequential number is read from the second non-volatile memory device 15 and sent to the compression / expansion circuit 18. And
The image information is subjected to decompression processing, for example, by inverse transformation by the MR method. Stretched in this way,
For example, the image information as shown in FIG. 6 is sent to the first nonvolatile storage device 13 and stored therein.

On the other hand, the code information storage area number 15a of the second non-volatile storage device 15 is searched by the code information storage location number of the read image information, and the code information and its position information as shown in FIG. 5 are read. Be done.

The code information is sent to the first non-volatile memory device 13 and added on the image information indicated by the position information to form the original image information as shown in FIG. .. In this way, the reproduced image information is sent to the display device 16 and displayed on the screen. It is also possible to print out on paper by a printing device (not shown). As described above, the degree of compression of image information can be increased.

That is, the image information is divided into image information and code information, and only the image information is compressed and stored. As a result, only the image information can be effectively compressed, and the character information can be coded and stored with a smaller capacity. Therefore, the more image information the character information has, the greater the effect thereof, and the more the image information can be stored by reducing the storage capacity for one image. The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and it goes without saying that various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention.

[0024]

As described above in detail, according to the present invention, it is possible to provide an image information processing apparatus capable of reducing the storage capacity for one image and efficiently storing image information.

[Brief description of drawings]

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

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a configuration example of a code information storage area in the second nonvolatile storage device, similarly.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration example of an image information storage area in the second nonvolatile storage device, similarly.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of image information in which character information and image information are mixed.

FIG. 5 is a diagram similarly showing an example of character information extracted from image information.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of image information in which a white image pattern is embedded in a character information portion.

[Explanation of symbols]

11 ... CPU, 12 ... Image reading device, 13 ... First non-volatile storage device, 14 ... Character recognition device, 15 ... Second non-volatile storage device, 15a ... Code information storage area, 15b
... image information storage area, 16 ... display device, 17 ... input device, 18 ... compression / expansion circuit.

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A reading unit for reading image information from a document in which character information and image information are mixed, an encoding unit for replacing the character information in the image information read by the reading unit with code information, and a code for the code. Compression means for compressing image information other than the character information replaced by the code information by the encoding means, image information compressed by the compression means, and the code information replaced by the encoding means and the image information thereof. An image information processing apparatus, comprising: a storage unit that stores the position information of the above in association with each other. 2. A reading means for reading image information from a document in which character information and image information are mixed, a coding means for replacing the character information in the image information read by the reading means with code information, and a code for this. Compression means for compressing image information other than the character information replaced by the code information by the encoding means, image information compressed by the compression means, and the code information replaced by the encoding means and the image information thereof. And a reading means for reading the image information stored in the storage means and the code information corresponding to the image information, and the image read by the reading means. Decompression means for decompressing information, and the image information decompressed by this decompression means before being read by the reading means. An image information processing apparatus, comprising: an output unit that outputs image information generated by combining the code information according to the position information.