Patent ID: 6393146
Filing Date: 2002-05-21
Classification: G06K,G06T

Abstract:
An apparatus for defining non-axial line surfaces in border string sequences representing a raster image, the apparatus comprising:a system memory for storing steps of a computer program; and a computer processor connected to the system memory for executing the steps of the computer program, wherein the computer program comprises: (a) a border definer for generating a border string sequence representing a color border in the raster image, wherein: the border string sequence comprises a plurality of surface strings; and a surface string comprises a receive slope and a send slope representing a slope of the border passing through a predetermined area of the raster image; (b) a surface string sequencer for converting the border string sequence into one or more surfaces, wherein a surface comprises one or more surface string sequences representing a section of the border string sequence; and (c) a non-axial line tag generator, responsive to the surface string sequences, for generating data tags representing a non-axial line surface in the raster image, wherein a non-axial line surface can occur when pixels in the raster image form at least two contiguous plateaus.