Abstract: The invention described herein provides a method and apparatus for document processing that efficiently separates and interrelates single modalities, such as text, handwriting, and images. In particular, the present invention starts with the recognition of text characters and words for the efficient separation of text paragraphs from images by maintaining their relationships for a possible reconstruction of the original page. The text separation and extraction is based on a hierarchical framing process. The process starts with the framing of a single character, after its recognition, continues with the recognition and framing of a word, and ends with the framing of all text lines. The method and apparatus described herein can process different types of documents, such as typed, handwritten, skewed, mixed, but not half-tone ones.

Abstract: Method and apparatus for reconstructing new documents from a group of old ones by removing the existing redundant information. Redundant information (images, text paragraphs) from retrieved multimedia documents is removed. Each document consists of two main parts stored in different databases. The first part of a document represents text paragraphs, the second part consists of the images and drawings related with the text paragraphs. An information reduction methodology examines first the text paragraphs of each document related with a specific topic, and removes the redundant information, such as same or similar paragraphs, by keeping pointers useful for a future reconstruction of the original documents. The remaining text paragraphs and the set of points are used to compose the first version of a new document.

Abstract: The invention described herein provides a method and apparatus for document processing that efficiently separates and interrelates single modalities, such as text, handwriting, and images. In particular, the present invention starts with the recognition of text characters and words for the efficient separation of text paragraphs from images by maintaining their relationships for a possible reconstruction of the original page. The text separation and extraction is based on a hierarchical framing process. The process starts with the framing of a single character, after its recognition, continues with the recognition and framing of a word, and ends with the framing of all text lines. The method and apparatus described herein can process different types of documents, such as typed, handwritten, skewed, mixed, but not half-tone ones.

Abstract: Method and apparatus for reconstructing new documents from a group of old ones by removing the existing redundant information. Redundant information (images, text paragraphs) from retrieved multimedia documents is removed. Each document consists of two main parts stored in different databases. The first part of a document represents text paragraphs, the second part consists of the images and drawings related with the text paragraphs. An information reduction methodology examines first the text paragraphs of each document related with a specific topic, and removes the redundant information, such as same or similar paragraphs, by keeping pointers useful for a future reconstruction of the original documents. The remaining text paragraphs and the set of points are used to compose the first version of a new document.