JPS63249278A - Information recognizing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To recognize a circle graph similarly to characters and symbols by approximating the peripheral part of a circle graph pattern with straight line groups and calculating parameters constituting the circle graph based on these straight line groups. CONSTITUTION:When a graphic pattern (circle graph) is decided, only the graphic pattern is extracted and is transferred to the memory in a circle graph recognizing part 4. The tangential line at a point P0 is defined as L, and an arc P0P1 is approximated with a straight line when an angle theta between P0L and P0P1 is a prescribed angle theta0. Parameters constituting the circle graph are calculated by a calculating means based on straight line groups obtained in this manner. Thus, the circle graph can be recognized similarly to characters and symbols.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Application in Business A] The present invention relates to an information recognition device, and more particularly, to an information recognition device that inputs and recognizes a manuscript containing a mixture of graphic data and character data.

[Prior Art] Conventionally, there has been a character recognition device that recognizes regular characters from character symbol patterns in image data manually generated by a document reading device. The effect of this character recognition device is that it not only converts handwritten manuscripts into regular fonts, but also encodes the recognized character symbol patterns (J!S code in many cases). It also means compressing data into a small amount of data when stored on a storage device.

By the way, it is assumed that only character and symbol patterns exist in the document or image data to be recognized by this type of apparatus. Therefore, for example, character symbol patterns and graphic patterns (e.g. pie charts, etc.)
If both are mixed, there is a drawback that the graphic pattern cannot be recognized.

Furthermore, when inputting only a figure pattern and performing image processing (for example, scaling processing, etc.) or data processing on that figure pattern, conventional methods do not recognize the figure but process it using the image data itself. The drawback is that the amount of data after processing ends up being enormous.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] The present invention has been made in view of the above prior art, and aims to provide an information recognition device that recognizes character symbols and pie chart patterns in input image data. .

[Means for solving the problem] In order to solve this problem, the present invention has the following configuration.

In other words, a manual method for manually converting a manuscript image into image data;
storage means for storing manually generated image data; linear approximation means for approximating at least the circumferential portion of a pie chart pattern in the image data to a group of straight lines; and a pie chart based on the group of straight lines approximated by the straight line approximation means and calculation means for calculating parameters constituting the .

[Operation] In the configuration of the present invention, image data manually entered by the input means is stored by the storage means, and the pie chart pattern in the stored image data is approximated to a straight line group by the straight line approximation means, and the straight line is The calculation means calculates the parameters forming the pie chart based on the group.

[Examples] Examples according to the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

[Description of Device Configuration (FIG. 1)] FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the information recognition device of this embodiment.

In the figure, 1 is a document, and 2 is an image reading device that optically reads the document. 3 is a buffer memory for storing read image data.

Reference numeral 4 denotes a pie chart recognition unit that recognizes a pie chart in the image data developed in the buffer memory 3, and the details of its processing will be described later. Reference numeral 5 denotes a character recognition unit that recognizes character symbol patterns in the image data developed in the buffer memory 3 based on information in the character font ROMB and information obtained by the pie chart recognition unit 4. The character pattern recognized by the character recognition unit 5 is read out from the character font ROM 6 and written into the VRAM 7, which is a display RAM. Also, this VRAM7
The various patterns stored in are displayed on the CRT 9 by the graphic controller GC8.

Furthermore, 10 is a CPU that controls the entire device, and includes a ROM 10a that stores a control program (flow chart in FIG. 2) for controlling the entire device, and a RAM 10b that is used as a work area for CPLIIO.

[Explanation of Processing Contents (FIGS. 2 to 6)] The basic processing contents of the present apparatus with the above configuration will be explained in the flowchart shown in FIG. 2.

First, in step S1, the image reading device 2 reads a document and develops the image data in the buffer memory 3. Next, in step S2, the input image data is thinned.

When this process is completed, a character pattern and a graphic pattern are discriminated in step S3. As a criterion for this determination, in this embodiment, when the length of the line segment (or vector) in the thinned image is short, it is determined that it is a character symbol.
On the other hand, if it is long, it is determined that it is a graphic pattern.

Now, if it is determined that it is a graphic pattern (pie chart), only that graphic pattern is extracted and transferred to a memory (not shown) in the pie chart recognition unit 4. The pie chart recognition unit 4 executes the processes from step 34 onwards.

In step S4, the thinned image is divided into point sequences, and linear approximation processing is applied to each of these point sequences to obtain linearized vector information. This situation is shown in Figures 3(a)-(
C), and the pattern shown in FIG. 3(C) is obtained by linear approximation.

[Explanation of Linear Approximation, Step S4] An example of the principle of this linear approximation process will be explained with reference to FIG.

A fixed point P0 and a moving point P1 moving clockwise are taken on the circumference. Then, when the tangent at point P0 is L, Po
The angle θ between L and P, P is the predetermined angle θ. P when it becomes. We decided to approximate PI (ie, P0P2) by a straight line. Below is point P.

Perform the same process using as a fixed point.

Note that a pie chart is made up of a circumferential portion that constitutes the pie chart, and a line segment λ that connects a point on the circumference and the center of the circle. Fourth
In the figure, the movement P is the end point P of this line segment β while moving to the point P2.

It will pass through. Therefore, the movement destination of the moving point PI is divided into two (branches). In this case, the moving point PI is a
When the moving point P moves to the point P4, the angle θ0 explained earlier will be satisfied. Therefore, in order to avoid selecting the point P4, , when the moving point P1 moves and branches into several branches, when the degree of change in the moving direction at these branch destinations (the degree of change is constant on the circumference) changes,
It turns out that it is best not to proceed in that branching direction. However, the coordinate position of this branch point is stored in the RAM 10b. Now, after linearly approximating the circumference in this way, we will now make a linear approximation from the coordinate position previously stored in RAM 10b in the direction of the line segment °C, and when the linear approximation of the entire pie chart is completed, Figure 3 A pattern as shown in (C) will be obtained. In the following explanation, the line segment approximated by a straight line on the circumference in Fig. 3 will be described as a circle element, and the line segment approximated by a straight line connecting the center position to a point on the circumference will be referred to as a straight line element. do.

[Description of calculation of center coordinates, step S5] Now, after the above-described linear approximation process is performed in step S4 of FIG. 2, the process moves to the next step S5, and the center coordinates of the pie chart are calculated.

The details of this calculation process will be explained below with reference to FIG.

In this embodiment, it is decided to calculate the coordinates Gl of the intersection of each circular element and the straight line element with the perpendicular bisector straight line of vector (1) when linear approximation is performed. Normally, the center position is calculated using the intersection coordinates of the perpendicular bisectors of only the vector of the circular element, but it cannot be determined at this point whether the vector of interest is a circular element or a straight line element. , the intersection coordinate Gl of the perpendicular bisector including the vector of the straight line element is calculated.

That is, if the perpendicular bisector of each vector vI is ItI, the intersection coordinates G of (jZ+, f,) are calculated, and hereafter, n ,, l13)...<x,, u +), (
JZz, 1s)...(It 2.j2t)m (1
1+-+, j2 +) sum (i-1)! The intersection coordinates GI are calculated.

FIG. 6 shows an example of plotting the intersection coordinates G obtained by the above-described processing. As explained earlier, since the intersection coordinates are also calculated for the perpendicular bisector of a straight line element,
Although variations occur, the original center coordinates of the circle (XMAX
It can be seen that the prowato points are concentrated in +MAX). Therefore, it can be seen that the coordinate position that appears most frequently should be set as the center coordinate of the circle.

Although this is a method for calculating the center coordinates of a circle, it is not limited to this method. For example, when vectorization is performed, both end positions of the vector are at least on the circumference, so an equation is found to calculate the coordinates that are the same distance from both end positions of at least three of the two vectors. I don't mind if you do it the same way. In this case as well, it is desirable to perform calculations not in one calculation but in multiple combinations and to obtain statistics. .

[Recognition of circle and straight line elements, step S6] Now, once the center coordinates of the circle have been calculated as described above, it is now time to identify circular elements and straight line elements.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIG. 7, the angle α between the perpendicular bisector U of each vector and the line connecting the center of the vector and the center coordinates of the circle. is less than a predetermined value, the vector is recognized as a circular element. In reality, this angle should be "0", but since the pixels developed in the memory are located at discrete locations, it is not necessarily "O". Therefore, the angle α. When V is larger than a predetermined value, the vector V is recognized as a line element.

The above processing is executed for all vectors to distinguish between circular elements and straight line elements. At this time, at least the starting point and ending point positions of the vector recognized as a straight line element, or the angle information from the center coordinates of the straight line vector, are stored in RAMIOb.

Now, once each element has been recognized, it's time to calculate the radius of the circle.

The calculation method is as shown in Figure 8(a), where the distance 1! between the determined center coordinates and the end point or start point of the vector of each circular element is calculated. It r + is calculated. Next, the obtained r
For i, as shown in FIG. 8(b), a frequency distribution is calculated with distance on the horizontal axis and frequency on the vertical axis. In this case “
You can see that there are two mountains. In other words, the pie chart is made up of two circles. Therefore, these “
The maximum point of the "mountain" part can be used as the radius.

By performing the above processing, the center coordinates and radius of the pie chart, as well as the positions and directions of the line segments that partition data within the pie chart, are determined. In other words, it is possible to obtain parameters for drawing a pie chart instead of image data.

Once the parameters of the pie chart have been extracted as described above, it is time to create a pie chart using VRAMT based on those parameters.
It is expanded on top and displayed using step SIO.

On the other hand, the character recognition unit 5 first performs character symbol cutting processing on the image data determined to be characters in step S3 (step S8). Next, normal character recognition processing is executed, the regular pattern of the recognized character is read from the character font ROM 6, and the VRAM? Expand to the top position.

As described above, according to this embodiment, it is possible to recognize pie charts in the same way as character symbols. Furthermore, when displaying the recognition results, characters and symbols are drawn and displayed based on codes, and pie charts are drawn and displayed based on parameters that express pie charts, so the amount of data can be minimized. In particular, when the recognition results are stored in an external storage device, since they are not stored as image data, it is possible to reduce the amount of information to an extremely small amount.

In particular, for pie charts, the pie chart is displayed using the coordinate position or direction of the line segment representing the radius and the boundary of each data in the pie chart, so the display is clearer than when displaying the image data itself manually. becomes possible.

Furthermore, when displaying a pie chart, its display position, size, etc. can be easily changed.

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, according to the present invention, pie charts can be recognized in the same way as character symbols.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a block configuration diagram of the information recognition device in this embodiment, Figure 2 is a flowchart showing the overall processing procedure in this device, and Figures 3 (a) to (C) are straight lines in the pie chart recognition unit. Figure 4 is a diagram to explain the progress of the approximation process, Figure 4 is a diagram to explain the process of linear approximation, Figure 5 is a diagram to explain the calculation of the center coordinates of a circle, and Figure 6 is a diagram to explain the calculated center coordinates of the circle. Figure 7 is a diagram showing the distribution, Figure 7 is a diagram explaining the process of recognizing circular elements and straight line elements that make up a pie chart, Figure 8 (a) is a diagram explaining the calculation of the radius of a circle, Figure 8 (b) ) is a diagram showing the frequency of the calculated radius of the circle. In the figure, 1... original, 2... image reading device, 3...
・Buffer memory, 4... Pie chart recognition unit, 5...
Character recognition section, 6...Character font ROM, ? ...j
2 RAM. 8...GC, 9...CRT, 10...CPU, 1
0 a-ROM, 10b...RAM. Figure 1°P°, 2°No°! ' Figure 3

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) an input means for inputting a document image as image data; a storage means for storing the input image data;
a linear approximation means for approximating at least a circumferential portion of a pie chart pattern in the image data to a straight line group; and a calculation means for calculating parameters constituting the pie chart based on the straight line group approximated by the straight line approximation means. An information recognition device comprising: (2) The information recognition device according to claim 1, further comprising drawing means for drawing a pie chart using the parameters calculated by the calculation means. (3) The parameters calculated by the calculation means are the center coordinates and radius of the circles constituting the pie chart, and the coordinate position or direction of the line segment indicating the boundary of each data in the pie chart. Claim 1 or 2
The information recognition device described in Section.