JP4040905B2 - Reduced image display device, method, program, and recording medium recording program - Google Patents

Description

[0001]
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a reduced image display technique suitable for searching electronic data such as documents.
[0002]
[Prior art]
Conventionally, when a large number of document images are displayed on a document filing apparatus or the like, a method of displaying a reduced image (thumbnail image) as shown in FIG. However, when there are a large number of similar images, it is often difficult to identify them by displaying a reduced image. To solve this problem, extract the title area from the document or image being filed, and display the title and the reduced image at the same time. Proposals have been made on display methods (for example, JP-A-9-274619 and JP-A-7-115493).
[0003]
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
However, the prior art has problems that the document title cannot be recognized or that the character spacing is narrow and the characters cannot be displayed large.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a reduced image display apparatus, method, program, and recording medium on which a program is recorded, which can be easily distinguished even with reduced images of similar documents.
[0004]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
In order to solve the above-described problem, a reduced image display device according to claim 1 of the present invention is a reduced image display device that reduces and displays the contents of electronic data that can be represented by a bitmap, and displays a reduced image of the electronic data. image display means for displaying multiple, the reduced image mutual and difference determining means for determining a similarity, said similarity is divided into several areas larger electronic data than a predetermined threshold similarity is a predetermined threshold value Difference image creating means for comparing corresponding regions of larger data and creating an image of a region having a large difference, and for electronic data having a degree of similarity greater than a predetermined threshold , instead of the reduced image An image created by the difference image creating means is displayed.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the reduced image display device according to the first aspect, the divided area is divided based on attributes such as a character area, a table area, a figure area, and a photograph area. .
According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the reduced image display device according to the first aspect, the area to be divided equally divides the entire electronic data by a predetermined window width. That is, as a method of dividing the area, for example, in the case of an image of A4, 400 dpi, the pixel is about 4800 pixels × 3360 pixels. The difference between the corresponding areas is taken.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the reduced image display device according to any one of the first to third aspects, the image created by the difference image creating means is an area having the largest difference. And That is, for example, a difference between corresponding areas divided into 100 areas is obtained, and an area having the largest difference among the 100 areas is set as a display target.
[0005]
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the reduced image display device according to any one of the first to fourth aspects, the difference image creating unit obtains the difference again when the difference is smaller than a predetermined threshold value. Is set, and the regions are compared with each other.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the reduced image display device according to any one of the first to fourth aspects, the difference image creating means reduces the entire electronic data when the difference is smaller than a predetermined threshold. It is characterized by displaying.
Moreover, the reduced image display method according to claim 7 of the present invention, in the reduced image display method of displaying by reducing the content of electronic data that can be represented in the bitmap, the method comprising: displaying a plurality of reduced images of the electronic data, the Determining the degree of similarity between the reduced images and comparing the corresponding areas of the data whose similarity is greater than the predetermined threshold by dividing the electronic data whose similarity is greater than the predetermined threshold into several areas And creating an image of a region having a large difference, and displaying an image of a region having a large difference instead of the reduced image for electronic data having a degree of similarity greater than a predetermined threshold. And
The program according to claim 8 of the present invention is characterized in that to function as the reduced image display apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 6.
A recording medium according to a ninth aspect of the present invention records the program for the reduced image display device according to the eighth aspect.
[0006]
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
Hereinafter, an embodiment of a reduced image display device of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of a main part of a reduced image display device according to the present invention. The reduced image display device itself is constituted by dedicated hardware or a personal computer equipped with a CPU, and various processes and operations to be described later are controlled by programs. Further, this program is stored in a recording medium such as a hard disk (not shown), and is read out and executed in the memory of the reduced image display device as necessary.
In FIG. 1, a reduced image creation unit 2 reads electronic data such as image data, a document created by a word processor, spreadsheet data, and creates a reduced image. The number of units to be created is, for example, the number displayed on the screen at a time. The difference determination unit 3 obtains the similarity between the plurality of reduced images created here, and if the similarity is larger than a predetermined threshold, the difference image creation unit 4 has a difference among similar images. The area of the part is cut out and the part is displayed on the image display unit 1.
If the area of the difference portion is larger than the image size (for example, the size of the thumbnail image) displayed on the image display unit 1, the reduced image creation unit 2 creates a reduced image, and the image display unit 1 may be displayed. For example, in the case of a document image, the difference is determined by identifying areas such as a character area, a character line, a photograph area, a table area, and a figure area, and corresponding areas of a plurality of similar reduced images for each area. There is a way to find the difference. Since the method of dividing an image into regions is normally performed by character recognition technology, detailed description is omitted. In character recognition, there is no need to recognize the photo area or figure area, so determine the area where the character exists and set the line direction (vertical or horizontal), line width (character size), etc. It will be confirmed.
The difference between the reduced images may be determined, for example, based on whether or not the pixel values of the pixels between the regions match. Further, the image having the largest difference may be displayed on the image display unit 1 instead of the reduced image. For example, in the example shown in FIG. 3, it is assumed that the left document 10 has a large interval between character lines in the lower left area of two document images, and the right document 11 has a small interval. When these reduced images are created, the overall layout is similar and cannot be determined. However, if the lower left region is differentiated between the left image 12 and the right image 13, the difference becomes large. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 4, the lower left character region 11 having a large difference is displayed on the image display unit 1 instead of displaying the reduced image of the entire image, so that the two images can be easily identified. Become. Here, an example of a character area as an area has been described, but the same applies to a photograph area and a table area.
[0007]
Next, the operation of the reduced image display device of the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing the processing of the reduced image display apparatus of the present invention. In the figure, first, a reduced image is created (S100). For example, if an original image of 1000 × 1000 pixels is to be displayed in an area where the displayable area of the reduced image is only 100 × 100 pixels in size, it is necessary to create a 1/10 reduced image. The image itself can be easily reduced by thinning out pixels. This image reduction is performed once for the number of images displayed on one screen, and the reduced pixel data is stored. Next, comparison between reduced images is performed (S101). Since the reduced image usually has the same number of pixels, it can be obtained by comparing the pixel values of the corresponding pixels. The pixel value is a numerical value of RGB in a color image, a grayscale value in a multi-value image, or a 1-bit value of 0 or 1 in a binary image. When there are a predetermined number (threshold value) or more of pixels having the same pixel value, it is determined that the two images have high similarity. The comparison of the reduced images is performed brute force for the reduced images created at one time.
Next, a difference image is created for the reduced image determined to have high similarity in step S101 (S102). In this method, for example, as described above, character recognition technology is used to recognize areas such as characters, photographs, and figures, and the areas are compared with each other to select an area having a large difference, thereby generating an image of a predetermined size. . The predetermined size means the same size as that of the reduced image in principle. In step S103, the reduced image is displayed. In this embodiment, the reduced image obtained in step S100 is displayed regardless of the similarity. Then, the user can sequentially change the display of the screen using a mouse or the like.
Thereafter, the interaction between the user and the device starts. First, the apparatus waits for the mouse to be clicked (S104). If it is detected that the button has been clicked, it is determined whether or not the portion instructing the end has been clicked, and if so, the process ends (S105). If not finished, it is determined whether or not a portion supporting the display of the next screen has been clicked (S106). If the next screen is clicked, the process proceeds to the image reduction step of step S100, and the remaining electronic data is processed. When a specific reduced image is clicked (S107), the difference image created in step S102 is displayed instead of the clicked reduced image (S108) and waits for the mouse to be clicked. If a specific reduced image is double-clicked, it can be processed as an instruction to display the contents of the data.
In this embodiment, the reduced image is first displayed regardless of the similarity of the reduced image, but a difference image may be displayed from the beginning.
[0008]
【The invention's effect】
As described above, according to the present invention, even a reduced image of a similar document (electronic data) can be easily distinguished, and a desired document can be efficiently searched.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of a main part of a reduced image display device according to the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing processing of the reduced image display device of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of an entire reduced image.
FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating an example of a difference image.
[Explanation of symbols]
1 image display unit, 2 reduced image creation unit, 3 difference determination unit, 4 difference image creation unit

Claims (9)

In a reduced image display device that reduces and displays the contents of electronic data that can be represented by a bitmap, an image display means that displays a plurality of reduced images of the electronic data, and a difference determination means that determines the degree of similarity between the reduced images , difference degree of similarity to create an image of an area corresponding to compare between regions difference is large data greater than some divided into regions similarity is a predetermined threshold value larger electronic data than a predetermined threshold value And a reduced image display device that displays an image created by the difference image creating unit instead of the reduced image for electronic data having a degree of similarity larger than a predetermined threshold .   2. The reduced image display device according to claim 1, wherein the area to be divided is divided based on attributes such as a character area, a table area, a figure area, and a photograph area.   2. The reduced image display device according to claim 1, wherein the area to be divided equally divides the entire electronic data by a predetermined window width. The reduced image display device according to any one of claims 1 to 3 , wherein the image created by the difference image creating means is an area having the largest difference. The reduction according to any one of claims 1 to 4 , wherein when the difference is smaller than a predetermined threshold, the difference image creating unit sets an area for which the difference is obtained again and compares the areas. Image display device. 5. The reduced image display device according to claim 1 , wherein the difference image creating unit displays the entire electronic data in a reduced size when the difference is smaller than a predetermined threshold value. In a reduced image display method for reducing and displaying the contents of electronic data that can be represented by a bitmap,
The step of displaying a plurality of reduced images of the electronic data, the step of determining the similarity between the reduced images, and dividing the electronic data having a similarity higher than a predetermined threshold into several regions Compare corresponding regions of data larger than a predetermined threshold to create an image of a region having a large difference, and for electronic data having a degree of similarity greater than a predetermined threshold, the difference is large instead of the reduced image A reduced image display method comprising: displaying an image of the region . A program for causing a computer to function as the reduced image display apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 6.   A computer-readable recording medium on which the program of the reduced image display device according to claim 8 is recorded.

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