Method and apparatus for separating foreground from background in images containing text
CA 2211258 C · Owner: United Parcel Service Of America, Inc. · Inventors: Gorian, Izrail S.; Moed, Michael C.
Overview
Its claims, description and drawings are in the Canadian Patents Database.
Open the CIPO recordAbstract From the Canadian patent
A method and apparatus for thresholding gray-scale images containing text as foreground and dirt, colors, noise and the like as background. The method is adaptive in nature. The method uses multiple sets of thresholding process parameters in a contrast-based histogram evaluation to produce multiple candidate thresholded binary images. The method automatically selects the highest quality binary image, that is, the binary image that best represents text in the foreground, from among the multiple candidate binary images. The apparatus for implementing the method is a pipeline processor for highest speed.
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Listed from its CIPO record in Patent Yard's archive of Canadian patents past their term. Its claims, description and drawings are in the CIPO record and on Google Patents, and the Claude kit works from them.
Why it's free to use
- Filed January 25, 1996 and granted December 26, 2000. A Canadian patent filed from October 1, 1989 lasts 20 years from filing, so its term ended January 25, 2016.
- A certificate of supplementary protection adds at most two years for a drug, so even that would have ended by January 25, 2018.
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Everything on this page comes from the CIPO record linked above. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.