Patent ID: 6487311
Filing Date: 2002-11-26
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
A method for compressing a digitized image of a document, the method comprising:performing optical character recognition (OCR) on the digitized image so as to assign alphanumeric character values to characters comprised in the image; identifying, based, at least in part, on a result of the performing step, a plurality of classes of the characters comprised in the image, such that the characters in each said class have a common one of the alphanumeric character values assigned thereto by the OCR in the performing step, each said class comprising at least one character; pruning each class of characters, thereby producing: information describing the plurality of classes of characters; and a residual image; and utilizing the information describing the plurality of classes of characters and the residual image as a compressed digitized image in further processing, wherein the performing step comprises assigning respective confidence levels to the characters with respect to the character value assigned thereto, and wherein the identifying step comprises excluding from the classes the characters whose confidence levels are below a predefined level, and wherein the utilizing step comprises selecting from each of the classes one of the characters whose respective confidence level is highest to serve as a template for the class, and wherein the digitized image is decompressed by using the template in place of each of the characters in the class.