JPH07168849A - Image information processor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To automatically sort image information of a document by pages on the processor side and to register it substantially in the page order by providing an image information registering means which registers the image information of the document on a recording medium on the basis of page information which is rearranged in the page order. CONSTITUTION:An OCR board 60 is connected to an interface circuit 36 and a page memory 40, and has a function for recognizing the characters of effective character string information of the document on the basis of stored data in a specific area of a page memory 40 temporarily storing the image information to be stored on an optical disk 19 and supplies the recognized effective character string information to a CPU 34 through the interface circuit 36. Then the CPU 36 sorts the pages of the document to be registered on the basis of the effective character string information. Namely, the pages can automatically be sorted by the page number reading function of the OCR board 60 and the document which is given pages at specific positions can automatically be registered in the page order when registered on the optical disk 19 by performing the page sorting processing on the processor side.

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 device such as an electronic image filing device for reading and registering image information, and more particularly, to automatically page sort and register read image information. Image information processing device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, an image of a document, etc., which is generated in large quantities in office work or the like, is read by a scanner device (two-dimensional scanning device), the read image is stored and registered in an optical disk, and any registered image is registered. Has been put into practical use as an effective means for making paperless, by retrieving and reading out as necessary and outputting it in an output device such as a CRT display device or a printer device so that it can be viewed.

In this type of electronic image filing apparatus, when a certain original image is registered in a predetermined location on the optical disk, the binders, documents and documents of all the optical disks in the electronic image filing apparatus are prepared for retrieval and reading. It is necessary to manage the registration destination information such as pages by some method. Therefore, in the conventional electronic image filing device,
Generally, registration on an optical disk is performed by registering images in the order in which they are read by a scanner.

[0004]

By the way, for example, when registering a document (image) with pages attached to an optical disc, it is assumed that the pages are read in reverse order from a scanner. Even in such a case, in order to register the documents in the order of pages, the operator used a method of registering the registered images one by one with a keyboard, a mouse or the like. It had a problem of being complicated.

Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above points, and even when the pages of the document to be registered are read in different order, the apparatus automatically performs the reading. It is an object of the present invention to provide an image information processing apparatus capable of performing page sorting and registering substantially according to page order.

[0006]

In order to solve the above problems, according to the present invention, character recognition means for recognizing page information of a page area in image information of a document to be registered, and character recognition means for recognizing the page information. Storing means for temporarily storing the page information, page sort processing means for sorting the page order based on the page information temporarily stored by the storing means, and sorting for the page order by the page sort processing means There is provided an image information processing apparatus comprising image information registration means for registering image information of the document to be registered in a recording medium based on the page information obtained.

[0007]

According to the above solving means, specifically, as the character recognizing means, the page number reading function of the OCR board can automatically perform page sorting, so that a document with a page at a predetermined position cannot be sorted. For example, even if the reading order from the scanner device is incorrect, the page order can be automatically registered by performing page sort processing on the device side when registering the recording medium such as an optical disk.

[0008]

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 configuration example of an image information processing apparatus of the present invention, for example, an electronic image filing apparatus.

That is, the electronic image filing apparatus includes a control module 10, a memory module 12, an image processing module 14, a communication control module 16, a scanner device 18, an optical disc 19 and an optical disc device 2.
0, keyboard 23, CRT display device 24, printer device 25, magnetic disk 26 and magnetic disk device 27, mouse 29, system bus 30, image bus 3
2 and the OCR board 60.

The control module 10 stores an image,
CPU 3 that performs various controls for search and edit processing
4, a keyboard 23, a mouse 29, an optical disk device 20, a magnetic disk device 27, and an interface circuit 36 connecting the CPU 34 and a reading start switch, which will be described later, of the scanner device 18.

A keyboard 23, a mouse 29, an optical disk device 20, and a magnetic disk device 27 are connected to the interface circuit 36. The memory module 12 is a main memory 3 that stores various control programs for image storage, retrieval, editing, etc. and management information.
8, a page memory 40 as an image memory having a storage capacity corresponding to several pages of an A4 size document, a display memory 42 as a display interface, a display control unit 44, and the like.

A buffer memory area 40a is provided in a part of the page memory 40. The page memory 40 is a memory for temporarily storing, for example, an image to be stored and registered in the optical disc 19 or an image read from the optical disc 19.

The display memory 42 is for temporarily storing an image displayed by the CRT display device 24. In the display memory 42, an image actually displayed in the display window of the CRT display device 24, for example, an image from the page memory 40 or an image from the buffer memory 40a is enlarged.
An image that has been reduced, rotated, inserted, or inverted in black and white is stored.

The display control section 44 controls the display processing of the CRT display device 24 and the like. The image processing module 14 includes an enlarging / reducing circuit 46 for enlarging and reducing an image, a vertical / horizontal converting circuit 48 for rotating an image, an encoding process for compressing an image (reducing redundancy), and an expansion. A compression / decompression circuit (CODE) that performs a decoding process to (restore the reduced redundancy)
C) 50, the scanner interface 52 for the scanner device 18, the printer interface 54 for the printer device 25, and the enlargement / reduction circuit 46 and the vertical / horizontal conversion circuit 48 are connected to the compression / expansion circuit 50, the scanner interface 52, and the printer interface 54. It is composed of an internal bus 56.

The compression / decompression circuit 50 uses an MH (Modify).
ed Huffman) method or MR (Modi)
Bandwidth compression or bandwidth expansion is performed using a fied read) method or the like.

The communication control module 16 is, for example, a local area network (Local Area Network).
BCP (Bus Com) connected to the network
It is configured by a communication interface 58 such as a communication processor.

Further, the communication control module 16 has an FC
P (facsimile connection function), UCP (Univ) connected to an external device such as a personal computer through an interface
ersal Communication Proce
Ssor) may be provided.

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

The image bus 32 is an image bus, and includes the memory module 12 and the image processing module 14.
It connects to the communication control module 16. The scanner device 18 is, for example, a two-dimensional scanning device, which obtains an electric signal according to an image on the original by scanning the original (document) two-dimensionally with a laser beam.

The optical disk device 20 sequentially records and registers the image read by the scanner device 18 on the optical disk 19 through the interface 36. The optical disk device 20 searches the optical disk 19 for an image corresponding to the search code specified by the keyboard 23 or the like.

The OCR (Optical Chara)
The cter Recognition board 60 is connected to the interface circuit 36 and the page memory 40, and a predetermined area in the page memory 40 for temporarily storing image information to be registered in the optical disk 19 (here, corresponds to a page area in an original image). Be assumed)
Has a function of recognizing the effective character string information of the document based on the stored data of the document, and the recognized effective character string information is sent to the CPU 34 via the interface circuit 36.
Supply to.

The CPU 34 sorts the order of the pages of the document to be registered based on this valid character string information, as will be described later. The keyboard 23 is used to input a unique search code corresponding to an image stored in the optical disk 19 and various operation commands for storage, search, edit processing, and the like.

The mouse 29 can be moved by moving a cursor (not shown) displayed on the display window of the CRT display device 24 vertically or horizontally to give an instruction at a desired position. It is for selecting or instructing the displayed contents (various operation modes, titles or area designations or icons for image editing, etc.).

The CRT display device (cathode ray tube display device) 24 displays an image read by the scanner device 18 and an image retrieved from the optical disk 19.

Icons and the like are displayed at the upper end, the lower end, and the right end on the display window of the CRT display device 24. The printer device 25 prints out (hard copy) the image read by the scanner device 18, the image retrieved from the optical disc 19, or the image displayed on the CRT display device 24.

The magnetic disk device 27 stores various control programs on the magnetic disk 26 mounted on the magnetic disk device 27, and also stores a search code input from the keyboard 23 and an image corresponding to the search code. Retrieval data (retrieval information) including a storage address on the optical disc 19, an image size, a retrieval frequency, etc. is stored.

Next, the operation of processing the image data in the electronic image filing apparatus having such a configuration will be described. Note that only the operation of reading the original image from the scanner device 18 and registering the read image data will be described here.

First, an original is input. That is, when the document (image) to be registered is set on the scanner device 18, the image information of the document (image) is read.

This image information is temporarily stored in the page memory 40 as described above, and the image data in a predetermined area (here, the area corresponding to the page portion of the document original to be registered) of the image memory is OCR board 60. Is supplied to.

The OCR board 60 performs the OCR analysis for recognizing the valid character string information according to the data of the predetermined area supplied as described above. That is, in this case, it is assumed that the document having the page number of each document is read from the scanner device 18 in a certain place.

Therefore, if the information is registered on the optical disc as it is, the page order cannot be registered. Therefore, when the respective images from the scanner device 18 are read, the OCR board 60 recognizes the portion where the page number is written, and actually Page numbers and documents 1 to M are associated with each other.

The contents are written in the page memory 40 as a page map. The area designated by the OCR board 60 with the page number can be designated by determining the designated vertical and horizontal coordinates by software processing by the CPU 34 as shown by the broken line in FIG.

Next, page sorting is performed based on the page map.
This page sorting can be realized by installing in CPU 34 a rearrangement program using CPU 34 and page memory 40 as shown in FIG.

Finally, when registering to the optical disc 19, the page map is read from the page memory 40, the above sort processing (sorting) is performed, and then the page map and the numbers of the pages of the actual image are made to correspond to each other. I will register.

In the above registration example, the case where the information amount of the entire document to be registered is within the storage capacity of the page memory 40 has been described. Next, a case where the amount of information of the entire document to be registered does not fit within the storage capacity of the page memory 40 will be described.

In this case, it is not physically possible to temporarily store the image information of all the documents to be registered in the page memory 40, perform the page sort as described above, and then collectively register the information on the optical disc 19. It is possible.

Therefore, in such a case, even if the page numbers of the document to be registered are read from the scanner device 18 in different order, the recording on the optical disk 19 is performed in the reading order. The magnetic disk device (hard disk) 2 in the form of a table of search information (addresses) page-sorted as shown in FIG.
You can record it in 7.

In FIG. 4, (a) shows the correspondence between the page order of the document recorded on the optical disk 19 and its address. That is, in this case, four documents with pages 1 to 4 are attached to the optical disc 1 in order of pages 3, 2, 4, and 1.
9, and the addresses on the optical disk 19 are A, B, C, and D.

The page information of these documents is temporarily stored in the page memory 40 after the characters are recognized by the OCR board 60 each time as described above. Therefore, when the last document is read by the scanner device 18, the CP
U34 is the page information from the page memory 40 and the optical disc 1
Magnetic disk device 27 that manages address information 9
A page-sorted table as shown in FIG. 4B is created on the basis of the address information from the table, and is recorded in the magnetic disk device 27.

That is, at the time of search, the operator is registered in the order of page numbers of documents to be searched, as in the case of 1, 2,
It suffices to access the page numbers 3 and 4 in order, and the registered image information can be output in the order of the address information D, B, A, and C on the optical disk 19 rearranged on the device side according to the access input.

That is, according to the present invention, the page number reading function of the OCR board can automatically perform page sorting, so that a document with a page at a predetermined position is
Even if the reading order from the scanner device is incorrect, the page order can be automatically registered by performing page sort processing on the device side when registering on the optical disc.

[0042]

As described above, according to the present invention, the pages are automatically sorted by the device even if the pages of the document to be registered are read in different order. Thus, it is possible to provide an image information processing apparatus that can be registered substantially in the order of pages.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of specifying a page area.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating an example of page sorting processing according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram illustrating another example of page sorting according to the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

10 ... Control module, 12 ... Memory module, 14
... image processing module, 16 ... communication control module, 1
8 ... Scanner device, 19 ... Optical disk, 20 ... Optical disk device, 23 ... Keyboard, 24 ... CRT display device, 25 ... Printer device, 26 ... Magnetic disk, 27
... magnetic disk device, 29 ... mouse, 30 ... system bus, 32 ... image bus, 60 ... OCR board, 34 ... CP
U, 36 ... Interface circuit, 38 ... Main memory, 40a ... Buffer memory, 40 ... Page memory, 4
2 ... Display memory, 44 ... Display control unit, 46 ... Enlargement / reduction circuit, 48 ... Vertical / horizontal conversion circuit, 50 ... CODEC, 52 ... Scanner interface, 54 ... Printer interface, 58 ... Communication interface.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A character recognition means for recognizing page information of a page area in image information of a document to be registered, a storage means for temporarily storing the page information recognized by the character recognition means, and the storage means. Page sort processing means for rearranging in page order based on temporarily stored page information, and image information of the document to be registered based on page information rearranged in page order by the page sort processing means An image information processing apparatus comprising image information registration means for registering in a medium.