Image quality, dollars, and very low contrast documents

William E. Weideman

doi:10.1117/12.28021

1 February 1991 Image quality, dollars, and very low contrast documents

William E. Weideman

Proceedings Volume 1454, Beam Deflection and Scanning Technologies; (1991) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.28021
Event: Electronic Imaging '91, 1991, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Image quality of scanned documents is examined in the context of a data entry department reading data from the images with intelligent character recognition (ICR) equipment. First, the equipment and its use are reviewed. An economic model of the cost benefit of the ICR equipment is developed, and the cost benefit of a specific application is examined. To complete the analysis, a test deck of documents is used to measure the specific parameters that relate to image quality and the performance of the equipment. These results are analyzed to show the impact of image quality on operating costs. A novel image processing algorithm which dramatically improves the quality of one bit per pixel images is shown to work with very low contrast documents. It also works on documents with noisy and/or dark backgrounds. A comparison of the enhanced images to those produced by off the shelf scanners is then made with several test documents. A test is made of the ICR system with the new algorithm in place to produce high quality images. The impact of the use of image enhancement is then shown to increase significantly the cost benefit of using ICR equipment. This test substantiates the relationship of dollars to image quality of scanned documents.

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William E. Weideman "Image quality, dollars, and very low contrast documents", Proc. SPIE 1454, Beam Deflection and Scanning Technologies, (1 February 1991); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.28021

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KEYWORDS

Image enhancement

Image quality

Optical character recognition

Scanners

Binary data

Imaging systems

Image processing

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