Fujitsu Develops Technology to Correct Curvature in Scanned Images of Book Pages

July 27, 2013 08:46 PM EST By: Jennifer Rocha

Overhead scanner captures images of open books or magazines, reproduces a distortion-free image as if scanned from a flat document

Story content courtesy of Fujitsu Research & Development Center Co., Ltd., JP

Fujitsu has developed new technology to flatten the distortion in the scanned image by accurately detecting the outlines of the pages and inferring the heightof the document’s curvature.

This technology makes it possible to produce an undistorted, highly legible image using only one camera to scan a book or magazine.

As tablet computers increase in popularity, consumers want to be able to view documents electronically, anytime and anywhere. But the compact scanners currently in use require that pages of bound documents be detached which has led to demand for a way to scan these pages while still in their binding.

This technology infers the curve height of the page at various locations based on the detected outline and corrects the scanned image’s distortion. Based on the outline, it infers the difference in curve height between one point and an adjacent point, and when the difference is great (when the machine determines the curvature appears to be great) it applies a correspondingly increased level of correction. Conversely, when the difference is small, the technology interprets that as little curvature, and the applied level of correction is accordingly weaker. This allows for accurate correction without vertically stretching characters near the spine of the book.

 

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