JPH0793485A - Image filing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable the learning of a character recognizing dictionary to be executed, where the recognition rate of a handwritten character is improved without excessively extending dictionary capacity. CONSTITUTION:A page memory 40 storing image data of a document original, a dictionary memory 26 where the dictionary constituted of plural kinds of character font data is stored, a character recognizing part 39 recognizing the character by comparing character image data which is added to image data stored in the page memory 40 with character font data of the dictionary which is stored in the dictionary memory 26 and a control module 10 which preserves character image data which is not recognized by the character recognizing part 39 so as to be rejected, selectively corrects the preserved character image data when the rejection time of character image data to be recognized as a common character exceeds a prescribed number and adds corrected character image data to the dictionary as character font data of the common character are provided.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention generally relates to an image filing apparatus which manages image data of an original as an image file, and more particularly to an image filing apparatus having a character recognition function.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A typical image filing apparatus is constructed such that image data of a plurality of document originals obtained by an image scanner or the like is registered as an image file on an optical disk, and the registered image data can be searched and edited. The document original has a title written in a predetermined area on the first page thereof, and this title is used as a keyword for specifying desired image data in the search and edit processing.

When the image filing device has a character recognition function, for example, this title is automatically recognized from the image data obtained from the image scanner and registered as a search keyword in a search keyword table provided in advance on the magnetic disk. It When this function is used, it is not necessary to input the title of the document original, which is a keyword for search, using a keyboard or the like when registering the image data.

Such an image filing apparatus includes a magnetic disk which stores a dictionary composed of font data of various characters in order to perform character recognition. When the character recognition process is started, the image filing device sequentially extracts the data portion representing the character image from the image data of this document original, compares each character image data with the character font data stored in the dictionary, and finds the most similar The character font with high frequency is determined as the recognized character. If the highest similarity is lower than the predetermined value, the character image data is rejected as unrecognizable.

[0005]

However, in the conventional character recognition, when a character form (font) cannot be supported by the dictionary and cannot be recognized, unrecognizable reject characters are input using a keyboard or the like. Since it has to be corrected to the correct character, it is possible that there will be no merit of always rejecting and using the character recognition function depending on the character shape (font). An object of the present invention is to provide an image filing device capable of learning a character recognition dictionary that improves the recognition rate without unnecessarily expanding the dictionary capacity.

[0006]

An object of the present invention is to store an image memory for storing image data of a document original, a dictionary memory for storing a dictionary composed of a plurality of character font data, and an image memory. A character recognition unit that recognizes characters by comparing the character image data contained in the image data with the character font data of the dictionary stored in the dictionary memory, and the character image data that the character recognition unit rejects because it cannot be recognized are saved. , When the number of rejections of character image data to be recognized as a common character exceeds a predetermined number, these stored character image data are selectively modified and the modified character image data is converted to the character font of this common character. This is achieved by an image filing device including a processing unit that adds data to a dictionary.

[0007]

In the image filing apparatus of the present invention, the dictionary is learned only when the number of rejections of character image data to be recognized as a common character exceeds a predetermined number.
It is possible to prevent the dictionary capacity from unnecessarily increasing. Also,
The added character font data is not recognized as a common character and can be easily created by selectively modifying the saved character image data. At this time, since an accidental element such as dust on the manuscript can be excluded from the character image data, the recognition rate does not lower due to dictionary learning.

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An image filing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. This image filing device reads images of a plurality of document originals,
It is used to manage the image data corresponding to the read image as an image file.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of this image filing apparatus. This image filing device includes a control module 1
0, memory module 12, image processing module 14,
Communication control module 16, scanner device 18, optical disc 19, optical disc device 20, keyboard 23,
CRT display device 24, printer device 25, magnetic disk 26 and magnetic disk device 27, mouse 2
9, system bus 30, image bus 32, character recognition unit 39
And an address generator 43.

The control module 10 controls the CPU 34 for controlling various processes such as image registration, retrieval, editing and the like.
And an interface circuit 36 for connecting the optical disk device 20 and the magnetic disk device 27 to the CPU 34.
Including and The keyboard 23 and the mouse 29 are the CPU 3
4 is connected.

The memory module 12 is read from a main memory 38 for temporarily storing a control program executed by the CPU 34, management information, work data, etc., and image data written on the optical disk 19 and the optical disk 19, for example. The image memory temporarily stores image data, and includes a page memory 40 having a storage capacity capable of storing image data corresponding to several pages of A4 size original document, and a display interface. A part of the page memory 40 constitutes a buffer memory 40a. The display interface includes a display memory 42 for temporarily storing image data to be actually displayed in the display window of the CRT display device 24, and a display memory 42.
Image data stored in the CRT display device 24
And a display control unit 44 for performing control for displaying on. The display memory 42 receives image data obtained by performing processing such as enlargement, reduction, rotation, insertion, and black / white inversion on the image data stored in the page memory 40 and the image data stored in the buffer memory 40a.

The image processing module 14 compresses the image data by an enlarging / reducing circuit 46 for enlarging and reducing the image data, a vertical / horizontal converting circuit 48 for rotating the image, and encoding for reducing redundancy. A compression / decompression circuit (CODEC) 50 for decompressing image data by decomposing the redundancy reduced by encoding, a scanner interface 52 connected to the scanner device 18, and a printer interface 54 connected to the printer device 25. , An internal bus 56 interconnecting them. In the compression / expansion circuit 50, band compression and band expansion of image data are performed by the Modified Huffman (MH) system or Modifie.
d Read (MR) method is used.

The communication control module 16 is for communication with a bus communication processor (BCP) provided for local area network (LAN) communication, a facsimile communication processor (FCP) provided for facsimile communication, or for communication with an external device such as a personal computer. Communication interface 5 such as a Universal Communication Processor (UCP)
It is composed of 8.

The system bus 30 is a control module 10,
The memory module 12, the image processing module 14, the communication control module 16, the address generation unit 43, and the character recognition unit 39 are connected. Control signals are transferred between these components via this system bus 30. The image bus 32 is connected to the memory module 12, the image processing module 14, the communication control module 16, and the character recognition unit 39. Image data is the image bus 32
Is transferred between these components via. The address generator 43 is further connected to the page memory 40 for addressing.

The scanner device 18 is an automatic document feeder (AD) for automatically and sequentially feeding a plurality of documents to a reading position.
F) 18a, which two-dimensionally scans the document set at the reading position with laser beam light, and generates electrical image data corresponding to the image of the document to be read.

The optical disc device 20 has an interface 20a for accessing the optical disc 19, and sequentially writes the image data obtained by the scanner device 18 onto the optical disc 19 and also the image data designated by a specific search code. Read from.

The CRT display device 24 is provided with the image data obtained by the scanner device 18 and the optical disk 1.
9 is used to display the image data recorded. Icons and the like are displayed at the top, bottom, and right ends of the display window.

The keyboard 23 is used for inputting a search code of image data recorded on the optical disk 19, a processing command and the like. The mouse 29 moves a cursor (not shown) displayed in the display window of the CRT display device 24 in the upward, downward, left, and right directions,
It is used to specify an operation mode, an image editing area, an icon, etc. corresponding to the cursor position.

The printer device 25 is used to print the image data obtained by the scanner device 18, the image data recorded on the optical disc 19, and the image data displayed on the CRT display device 24 as a hard copy.

The magnetic disk device 27 stores a control program for various CPUs 34 prepared in advance for managing image files, and a magnetic disk 26 for storing a document management table as search information for searching image data recorded on the optical disk 19. To access. This document management table includes a title management table, a search keyword table, a page management table, and a record management table. The title management table includes a plurality of registration numbers, and document numbers and titles set corresponding to the registration numbers. The search keyword table is composed of the same registration number as that of the title management table and a plurality of search keywords set corresponding to each registration number. The page management table includes the same registration number as that of the title management table, all page numbers of the document corresponding to each registration number, and a record number set corresponding to each page number. The record management table stores all record numbers set in the page management table and the storage address of the optical disk 19 indicating the address where the beginning of the image data corresponding to each record number is stored.
An image length indicating the length of this image data, a compression method of this image data, an image attribute indicating an attribute such as resolution, a search frequency indicating the number of times this image data has been searched, and the like. The storage address is a logical address, and the physical track address and the physical sector address of the optical disk 19 are calculated in correspondence with this logical address during actual access.

The address generator 43 generates an address of the page memory 40 in order to set the processing range of the image data stored in the page memory 40. The character recognition unit 39 recognizes each character image data of the character string represented by the image data within the specific range set by the address generation unit 43 as a character.

The magnetic disk 26 includes a dictionary memory for storing a character recognition dictionary composed of various character font data and a reject information memory for storing the character image data rejected by the character recognition together with the character to be recognized.

Next, the character recognition operation of this image filing apparatus will be described. For example, when the title of the document original is recognized by characters, this title is written in a predetermined position of the document original. When this document is set in the scanner device 18,
The scanner device 18 reads an image of a document and generates image data corresponding to this image. This image data is stored in the page memory 40 via the image processing module 1. The CPU 34 causes the address generation unit 43 to generate an address in order to specify a part of the image data stored in the page memory 40 corresponding to the title, and converts each character image data of the character string forming the title into a character recognition unit. 43. The character recognition unit 43 compares the character image data with the character font data included in the character recognition dictionary provided on the magnetic disk 26, and recognizes the character corresponding to the character font data having the highest degree of similarity. if,
When the highest degree of similarity in this recognition is lower than the predetermined value, the character recognition unit 43 rejects this character image data because it cannot recognize the character.

FIG. 2 shows the processing performed at the time of this rejection. When this process is started, the rejected characters are first corrected and input. Here, the character that the character recognition unit 43 cannot recognize is input through the keyboard 23 or the like. Subsequently, it is checked whether the rejected number of rejected character image data for this character exceeds a predetermined number, for example, 5 times. If it does not exceed 5 times, the rejected character image data and the corrected character are used as reject information on the magnetic disk 26.
Is stored in the reject information memory of, and this process ends for the next character recognition.

On the other hand, when the number of rejects exceeds 5 in the above-mentioned check, all reject information of the corresponding characters stored in the reject information memory of the magnetic disk 26 is displayed on the display device 24. Referring to this display,
As a result of the operator examining whether or not the dictionary needs to be updated, if there is no update command, the reject information already stored in the reject information memory is deleted from the displayed reject information, and the unmemorized reject information is rejected. Return to the step of storing in memory. Along with this, the number of times the corresponding character is rejected is reduced to one.

If a dictionary update command is input from the keyboard 23 or the like, an instruction to confirm and correct each character image data is issued using the keyboard 23 and the mouse 29, and then the dictionary data is input based on this instruction. That is, character font data is created. Here, the character image data, which is the cause of rejection due to dust or the like on the document, is deleted. In addition, even if it is a handwritten character,
If a line that makes up a character accidentally touches an adjacent line, this is corrected correctly. When the dictionary data is created in this way, character recognition using this dictionary data is performed to confirm that no recognition error occurs. If there is a recognition error, the input of an update command is awaited again. If there is no recognition error, the dictionary is updated by actually adding this dictionary data to the dictionary, and this process ends for the next character recognition.

In the image filing apparatus of this embodiment, the dictionary is learned only when the number of rejections of character image data to be recognized as a common character exceeds a predetermined number, so that the dictionary capacity may unnecessarily increase. It can be prevented.
Further, the added character font data is not recognized as a common character, and can be easily created by selectively modifying the saved character image data. At this time, since an accidental element such as dust on the manuscript can be excluded from the character image data, the recognition rate does not lower due to the dictionary learning.

[0028]

According to the present invention, it is possible to learn a character recognition dictionary which improves the recognition rate of handwritten characters without unnecessarily expanding the dictionary capacity.

[Brief description of drawings]

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

FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a process performed when the image filing apparatus shown in FIG. 1 rejects character image data because it cannot be recognized in a character recognition operation.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 ... Control module, 23 ... Keyboard, 24 ... CR
T display device, 29 ... Mouse, 26 ... Magnetic disk, 39 ... Character recognition unit, 40 ... Page memory.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification code Office reference number FI technical display location G06K 9/03 C 8623-5L

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An image memory for storing image data of a document original, a dictionary memory for storing a dictionary composed of a plurality of character font data, and character image data included in the image data stored in the image memory. Character recognition means for performing character recognition by comparing with the character font data of the dictionary stored in the dictionary memory, and character image data rejected because the character recognition means cannot recognize should be saved and recognized as a common character. When the number of rejections of the character image data exceeds a predetermined number, these stored character image data are selectively modified, and the modified character image data is added to the dictionary as character font data of this common character. An image filing apparatus comprising a processing means. 2. The processing means has a test means for causing the character recognition means to perform character recognition using character font data added to the dictionary to confirm that a recognition error does not occur. The image filing device according to claim 1.