Abstract: An image processing apparatus includes a plurality of imaging devices located at respective prescribed positions; at least one optical device for receiving light and projecting an image of the received light to the imaging devices; and an image processing section for processing respective images obtained by the imaging devices, wherein the imaging devices and the optical section form a single unit.

Abstract: A method of determining unintended inclination in an image of characters that is to be processed by a device such as a copy machine, a facsimile machine, or an optical character recognition system. An image of characters is generated, and expansion is performed on this image the optimal number of times. The number of expansions is based on the differences in the area of the non-background portion of the image at various stages of expansion. Next, the major direction of inclination is determined for the image. The inclination angle of the image is then determined based on the inclination factors of the character lines for various zones in the image.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for discriminating between figure areas, e.g., half-tone photographs, drawings and the like, and text areas in an image. More specifically, an image is processed to determine the difference between maximum and minimum brightnesses in convolutions thereof. When the difference between the maximum and minimum brightnesses is less than or equal to a predetermined level, the center pixel in the convolution is determined to be a half-tone pixel. A half-tone area is detected by determining areas of the image having at least a predetermined number of half-tone pixels. In another aspect of the invention, contiguous areas of the image having fewer than a predetermined number of configuration pixels are determined to be vacant areas having neither figure nor character information.

Abstract: By an image processing method, a contour of a figure is represented with a series of clockwise outline vectors, a sense of each vector being set such that the figure be painted out by painting a left side of the vector, then, an outline is created from the outline vectors, and the figure is painted through a scanning operation in an x-axis direction by starting a painting operation at an odd-numbered intersection of the outline and a horizontal scanning line and suspending the painting operation at an even-numbered intersection thereof, thus painting pixels between the odd-numbered intersection and the even-numbered intersection, inclusive of the pixel at the odd-numbered intersection but exclusive of the pixel at the even-numbered intersection. In order to create the outline, plotting points for the outline are first calculating from the outline vectors through use of Bresenham algorithm. Then, a positional relation of a current plotting point to the previous one and the next one is obtained.