Patent ID: 8606010
Filing Date: 2013-12-10
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
1. A method of identifying regions of an input image that contain human-readable, printable characters, said method comprising the following steps; (1) providing a plurality of training images having foreground pixels, said training images having printable-character regions containing examples of said printable characters and non-character regions not containing examples of said printable characters; (2) for each of said training images, applying the following steps: (3) defining a character classifier block using said image feature characteristic statistics, said character classifier block including at least a level 1 classifier sub-block, a level 2 classifier sub-block and level 3 classifier sub-block, each classifier sub-block classifying a received image region as a printable-character region or as a non-character printable regions, wherein said level 2 classifier sub-block has a greater computational cost than said level 1 classifier sub-block, and said level 3 classifier sub-block has a greater computational cost than said level 2 classifier sub-block; (4) extracting a plurality of test sample pairs from said input image, each test sample pair including a test image region of said input image and a test CC region constructed from the test image region; (5) submitting said plurality of test sample pairs to said character classifier block, wherein: (6) designating the test image regions of the test sample pairs classified as printable-character regions by the level 3 classifier sub-block as the regions of the input image that contain human-readable, printable characters.