Abstract: Positions of marker images included in two images obtained by a digital radiography system are detected by a marker position detecting section. The marker image intervals in each image are calculated by an extension rate correcting section in accordance with the detected positions of the marker images. Reduction/extension for one image is perfomed in accordance with the extension rate of the image obtained by a ratio of the calculated marker image intervals, thereby coinciding extension rates of two images.

Abstract: A character recognition system 10 includes a segmentation processor 12 which is coupled between an electronic tablet 14 and a character recognizer 18. The tablet 14 has an associated stylus or pen 15 with which a user forms symbols, such as block printing or script characters, on a surface of the tablet 14. The tablet 14 has x-axis and y-axis output signals expressive of the position of the pen 15 within an x-y tablet coordinate system. A stroke capture device 16 intercepts the x-y outputs from the tablet to generate x-y position pair data for the segmentation processor 12. An output of the segmentation processor 12 is data expressive of connected strokes and unconnected strokes which is input to the character recognizer 18.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for determining a predominant angle of orientation of an image with respect to a reference angle. A file of picture elements is generated which depicts the image with respect to the reference angle. The picture elements are projected onto a plurality of contiguous segments of imaginary lines at selected angles across the file. Each imaginary line is perpendicular to its associated direction of projection. The number of picture elements that fall into the segments for each projection are counted. An enhancement function is applied to the segment counts of each projection. The projection that generates the largest value of the enhancement function defines the angle of orientation of the image. The position of a document scanner or the document itself may be rotated to compensate for the detected skew.

Abstract: A method for producing a third image that clarifies the differences between two images which are allocated to one another is proposed in which the regions in which a parameter value of the image signals of the first image is greater than the parameter value of the image signals of the second image are reproduced by strips extending in a first direction and those regions in which the parameter value of the image signals of the second image is greater than the parameter value of the image signals of the first image are reproduced by strips extending in a second direction that extends at a right angle relative to the first direction, and the strips alternately correspond to the image signals of the first image and to image signals of the second image.

Abstract: In character normalization for optical character recognition preprocessing employing horizontal and vertical scaling factors A and B, the value of each pixel in the normalized character image superimposed on the original character image is determined from the values of the pixels in the original image lying within an elliptical neighborhood surrounding the normalized character image pixel and having major and minor elliptical axes proportional to A and B.