Patents by Inventor Masanori Yokoi

Masanori Yokoi has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9077914
    Abstract: This invention can generate printed matter on which a multi-valued discrimination image of three values or more cannot be visually confirmed under ordinary light but can be visually confirmed via an infrared camera under infrared light. To this end, a holding unit holds items of color information C1, C2, and C3 each indicating usage amounts of printing materials of three types, used by a printing apparatus, which have a color difference under visible light not more than a pre-set threshold, and which have different infrared light ray absorption rates. When a latent image generating unit generates infrared light ray latent image data of three tones, a discrimination image data generating unit decides one color information item Ci (1?i?3) held by the holding unit, and outputs the decided Ci to an output unit which outputs the received pixel values to the printing apparatus.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 19, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 7, 2015
    Assignee: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Koji Harada, Junichi Hayashi, Masanori Yokoi
  • Patent number: 8922839
    Abstract: A array including array elements in a number smaller than the minimum number of pixels, having values larger than Th_c, and a plurality of array elements having values smaller than Th_c is generated. A formation array having the same size as that of a latent image is generated from the generated array. An image obtained by replacing the pixel value at a pixel position within the first region in the latent image with the value at the pixel position in the formation array is generated as a configuration image. The pixel value at each pixel position in the configuration image, that corresponds to each pixel position in the input image, is output as the amount of a highly infrared absorbent color material used to print a pixel at this pixel position in the input image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 6, 2012
    Date of Patent: December 30, 2014
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada, Junichi Hayashi
  • Patent number: 8564837
    Abstract: For a selected pixel value, amounts of color material used of respective color materials used to print a background region, and those of respective color materials used to print a latent image region are calculated. The calculated amounts of color material used are stored in a memory in association with the selected pixel value. Amounts of color material used corresponding to respective pixel values of a pixel value group are read out from the memory, and are output to a printing apparatus.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 28, 2011
    Date of Patent: October 22, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Junichi Hayashi, Koji Harada
  • Patent number: 8482825
    Abstract: When a lightness level expressed by a selected pixel value is equal to or larger than a threshold, the use amounts of respective color materials of a first color material group, and those of respective color materials of a third color material group are stored in a memory in association with the selected pixel value. On the other hand, when the lightness level expressed by the selected pixel value is smaller than the threshold, the use amounts of respective color materials of the first color material group, and those of respective color materials of a second color material group are stored in the memory in association with the selected pixel value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 2, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 9, 2013
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Junichi Hayashi, Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada
  • Publication number: 20130057880
    Abstract: A array including array elements in a number smaller than the minimum number of pixels, having values larger than Th_c, and a plurality of array elements having values smaller than Th_c is generated. A formation array having the same size as that of a latent image is generated from the generated array. An image obtained by replacing the pixel value at a pixel position within the first region in the latent image with the value at the pixel position in the formation array is generated as a configuration image. The pixel value at each pixel position in the configuration image, that corresponds to each pixel position in the input image, is output as the amount of a highly infrared absorbent color material used to print a pixel at this pixel position in the input image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 6, 2012
    Publication date: March 7, 2013
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada, Junichi Hayashi
  • Patent number: 8326085
    Abstract: The present invention enables inclination detection by detecting an inclination of a document image based on a feature of a document area. In order to achieve this, reduction processing is performed on document image data including the document area so as to generate a reduced document image corresponding to the document area that has been extracted. Thereafter, filter processing is performed on the reduced document image so as to generate an edge image by extracting at least one edge of the document area. Then, a straight line adjoining an edge of the edge image is detected using a Hough transformation so that the inclination of the document image is determined based on an inclination of the straight line. Consequently, inclination detection with high accuracy can be performed based on the feature of the document area.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 8, 2009
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2012
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventor: Masanori Yokoi
  • Publication number: 20120127493
    Abstract: For a selected pixel value, amounts of color material used of respective color materials used to print a background region, and those of respective color materials used to print a latent image region are calculated. The calculated amounts of color material used are stored in a memory in association with the selected pixel value. Amounts of color material used corresponding to respective pixel values of a pixel value group are read out from the memory, and are output to a printing apparatus.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 28, 2011
    Publication date: May 24, 2012
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Junichi Hayashi, Koji Harada
  • Publication number: 20120127492
    Abstract: This invention can generate printed matter on which a multi-valued discrimination image of three values or more cannot be visually confirmed under ordinary light but can be visually confirmed via an infrared camera under infrared light. To this end, a holding unit holds items of color information C1, C2, and C3 each indicating usage amounts of printing materials of three types, used by a printing apparatus, which have a color difference under visible light not more than a pre-set threshold, and which have different infrared light ray absorption rates. When a latent image generating unit generates infrared light ray latent image data of three tones, a discrimination image data generating unit decides one color information item Ci (1?i?3) held by the holding unit, and outputs the decided Ci to an output unit which outputs the received pixel values to the printing apparatus.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 19, 2011
    Publication date: May 24, 2012
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Koji Harada, Junichi Hayashi, Masanori Yokoi
  • Publication number: 20120127545
    Abstract: When a lightness level expressed by a selected pixel value is equal to or larger than a threshold, the use amounts of respective color materials of a first color material group, and those of respective color materials of a third color material group are stored in a memory in association with the selected pixel value. On the other hand, when the lightness level expressed by the selected pixel value is smaller than the threshold, the use amounts of respective color materials of the first color material group, and those of respective color materials of a second color material group are stored in the memory in association with the selected pixel value.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 2, 2011
    Publication date: May 24, 2012
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Junichi Hayashi, Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada
  • Patent number: 8064636
    Abstract: To accurately extract embedded information from a document image using line spacing watermark, an image processing apparatus for extracting watermark information includes an input unit which inputs a document image as image data, an image reduction unit which generates, from the image data, reduced image data reduced in the first direction, a detection unit which scans the reduced image data in the second direction and detects the length of a blank region as line spacing information, and an extraction unit which extracts watermark information embedded in the document image based on the line spacing information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 28, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 22, 2011
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada, Takami Eguchi
  • Patent number: 8059859
    Abstract: To provide a technique of embedding information in a document image containing character strings, photos, and graphics, an image processing apparatus for inputting a document image and embedding watermark information by controlling the line spacing between character strings in the document image includes an input unit which inputs a document image as image data, an image reduction unit which generates reduced image data from the image data, a determination unit which determines reduced objects corresponding to character strings in the image data, a specifying unit which specifies the position of each character string in the image data based on the positions of the reduced objects in the reduced image data, and an embedding unit which embeds the watermark information in the image data by moving the positions of a plurality of specified character strings in the image data based on a preset line spacing correspondence relationship.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 28, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 15, 2011
    Assignee: Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Koji Harada, Masanori Yokoi, Takami Eguchi
  • Publication number: 20110090520
    Abstract: An image processing apparatus for generating a print image which can be easily visually recognizable under a particular light source, without using special ink, by utilizing a characteristic of a print medium. A color information holding unit holds first color information and second color information indicating different ink use amounts in a print unit per unit area on a print medium, and a color difference equal to or less than a predetermined value under ordinary light. In accordance with a value of a pixel of binary latent image data delivered from a latent image generator, a discrimination image data generator print-outputs one of the first color information and the second color information as print data with respect to the pixel.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 28, 2010
    Publication date: April 21, 2011
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada, Junichi Hayashi
  • Publication number: 20100104131
    Abstract: Character string heights and line spacing values are acquired as character string information on a document image, and fluctuations in the character string height and fluctuations in the line spacing value are calculated as variances. If the calculated variance is equal to or lower than a threshold value, the character string information is determined as being appropriate for use in extracting line-spacing watermarks, and line-spacing watermark information is extracted from the character string information.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 23, 2009
    Publication date: April 29, 2010
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Masanori Yokoi
  • Publication number: 20090316996
    Abstract: The present invention enables inclination detection by detecting an inclination of a document image based on a feature of a document area. In order to achieve this, reduction processing is performed on document image data including the document area so as to generate a reduced document image corresponding to the document area that has been extracted. Thereafter, filter processing is performed on the reduced document image so as to generate an edge image by extracting at least one edge of the document area. Then, a straight line adjoining an edge of the edge image is detected using a Hough transformation so that the inclination of the document image is determined based on an inclination of the straight line. Consequently, inclination detection with high accuracy can be performed based on the feature of the document area.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 8, 2009
    Publication date: December 24, 2009
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventor: Masanori Yokoi
  • Publication number: 20090175493
    Abstract: To accurately extract embedded information from a document image using line spacing watermark, an image processing apparatus for extracting watermark information includes an input unit which inputs a document image as image data, an image reduction unit which generates, from the image data, reduced image data reduced in the first direction, a detection unit which scans the reduced image data in the second direction and detects the length of a blank region as line spacing information, and an extraction unit which extracts watermark information embedded in the document image based on the line spacing information.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 28, 2008
    Publication date: July 9, 2009
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Masanori Yokoi, Koji Harada, Takami Eguchi
  • Publication number: 20080298634
    Abstract: To provide a technique of embedding information in a document image containing character strings, photos, and graphics, an image processing apparatus for inputting a document image and embedding watermark information by controlling the line spacing between character strings in the document image includes an input unit which inputs a document image as image data, an image reduction unit which generates reduced image data from the image data, a determination unit which determines reduced objects corresponding to character strings in the image data, a specifying unit which specifies the position of each character string in the image data based on the positions of the reduced objects in the reduced image data, and an embedding unit which embeds the watermark information in the image data by moving the positions of a plurality of specified character strings in the image data based on a preset line spacing correspondence relationship.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 28, 2008
    Publication date: December 4, 2008
    Applicant: CANON KABUSHIKI KAISHA
    Inventors: Koji Harada, Masanori Yokoi, Takami Eguchi
  • Patent number: 4761894
    Abstract: A drying furnace for use in coating drying in which a hot gas recycling duct for emitting radiation heat is disposed on the inlet zone of a tunnel-like furnace main body and resin-removing ducts are disposed along the ceiling of the inlet zone and the exit zone of the furnace main body respectively, wherein the furnace main body is turned in a U-shaped configuration so that the inlet and the exit thereof are arranged side by side, and the hot gas supplied to the hot gas recycling duct is supplied to each of resin-removing the ducts. Resinous substances can surely be prevented from forming and depositing at both of the inlet and the exit of the furnace and the cleaning work for the resin-removing ducts can be saved.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 29, 1986
    Date of Patent: August 9, 1988
    Assignees: Trinity Industrial Corporation, Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Shuji Hamasaki, Michio Taniguchi, Masanori Yokoi, Shunichi Akiyama, Yasuo Tokushima
  • Patent number: 4569740
    Abstract: An electrode for cation electrodeposition coating which comprises a sintered mass of metal oxide having electroconductivity, such as ferrite or magnetite, and a method for coating by electrodeposition by use of the electrode described above are disclosed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 3, 1982
    Date of Patent: February 11, 1986
    Assignee: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha
    Inventors: Yoshinobu Takahashi, Masanori Yokoi