Abstract:
An interactive database organization and searching system employs text search and image feature extraction to automatically group documents together by appearance. The system automatically determines visual characteristics of document images and collect documents together according to the relative similarity of their document images.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     The following related commonly-owned copending application is being filed concurrently and is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes: 
     John F. Cullen, et. al., entitled, &#34;Method and System for Document Image Feature Extraction,&#34;, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/936,339, now pending. 
     Further, this application incorporates by reference the following related U.S. Patent Applications in their entirety for all purposes: 
     U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/431,059, Mark Peairs, entitled, &#34;Iconic Paper&#34;; and now U.S. Pat. No. 5,717,940 
     U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/609,641, John F. Cullen, et. al. entitled, &#34;Image Database Browsing and Query Using Texture Analysis&#34;, filed Mar. 1, 1996, now pending 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     This invention relates to document management systems and more particularly to providing a method of navigating through a database of document images. 
     The proliferation of low-cost, high-capacity electronic storage of document images has enabled users to keep ever increasing amounts and varieties of documents, previously stored in hard copy format, as electronic information online. While this revolution in storage technology has reduced the cost of document storage, it brings with it the need for more efficient methods of searching through a myriad of online documents to find a particular document or set of documents of interest to the user. 
     Methods for locating a document of interest have been rudimentary at best. Typically, in these methods, documents are scanned into the computer and an Optical Character Recognition (&#34;OCR&#34;) program converts the image into a textual file. Next, a form of keyword matching search is performed, with the system either scanning the entire text of all documents, or a set of carefully chosen keywords thought to be representative of the document by a person who initially classified the document. The problem with the first approach is the high search cost involved with traversing a large number of documents in their entirety. The difficulty with the second approach is that different persons will employ different strategies to filing and retrieval. As the heterogeneity of documents contained in databases increases, the reliability of these traditional search methods diminishes. 
     Recognizing the opportunity to exploit the information content of the image portion of documents, several attempts have been made to search for documents based upon matching of small images contained in the documents. For example, M. Y. Jaisimha, A. Bruce and T. Nguyen in their work, &#34;DocBrowse: A system for Textual and Graphical Querying on Degraded Document Image Data&#34; describe a system which searches for documents based upon company logos in letterheads. D. Doermann, et. al. in &#34;Development of a General Framework for Intelligent Document Retrieval,&#34; outline a system for matching documents based upon generation and matching of an image descriptor which describes low-level features and high-level structure of a document. Unfortunately, this method requires intensive processing of the image information, which greatly curtails its use in most commercial applications. 
     While such methods provide document search capability via elemental matching of image characterization vectors, they do not provide a useful method to organize a large database of document images. These and other shortcomings indicate that what is needed is a method and system for efficiently searching a database of document images. This method would expedite search by organizing the database according to the textual as well as the visual characteristics of document images. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention provides an interactive database organization and searching system which employs text search and image feature extraction to automatically group documents together by appearance. The system automatically determines visual characteristics of document images and collect documents together according to the relative similarity of their document images. 
     One representative embodiment is a method that includes the steps of accepting from the user a textual string keyword to serve as the basis for an initial search, searching the textual component of document images in the database for the keyword, grouping document images having textual components which contain the keyword into clusters of document images based upon processing of the features extracted from compressed representations of the document images, displaying a representative document image for each cluster of document images, and accepting input from the user indicating a particular cluster of document images upon which the system may perform further search. 
     Another representative embodiment is a method that includes the steps of grouping document images together based upon feature information to form clusters of document images having similar feature characteristics, selecting a representative document image from each cluster of document images, displaying the representative document image to the user, and accepting input from the user to select a cluster of images upon which the system may perform further search. 
     A related embodiment extracts feature information from the compressed image prior to performing the grouping steps described above. Another related embodiment also permits the user to specify a desired number of clusters. 
     The invention will be better understood by reference to the following detailed description in connection with the following drawings. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     FIG. 1 depicts a representative computer system suitable for implementing the invention. 
     FIG. 2A depicts a flow chart describing a representative querying operation of the database in an embodiment of the invention. 
     FIG. 2B depicts a flow chart describing a representative querying operation of the database in an alternative embodiment of the invention. 
     FIG. 3A depicts a flow chart of the steps performed in organizing the database in an embodiment of this invention. 
     FIG. 3B depicts a flow chart of the steps performed in organizing the database in an alternate embodiment of this invention. 
     FIG. 4 depicts the use of compression on a document image to facilitate low cost storage and expedient manipulation of image components by the system. 
     FIG. 5 depicts extraction of image feature information from compressed images to serve as the basis for image grouping. 
     FIG. 6 depicts extraction of statistical moments from low frequency image information. 
     FIG. 7 depicts extraction of connected components of number of words and number of pictures from high frequency image information. 
     FIG. 8 depicts extraction of connected components of number of columns from high frequency image information. 
     FIG. 9 depicts the clustering of document images aspect of the invention. 
     FIG. 10 depicts the use of a web browser to implement the display and user interface portions of the invention. 
    
    
     DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     Representative System Suited to Practice the Invention 
     In a typical installation, the invention will be practiced on a computer system with the basic subsystems such as depicted in FIG. 1. In the representative system of FIG. 1, a computer system 10 includes bus 12 which interconnects major subsystems such as central processor 14, system memory 16, input/output (I/O) controller 18, and external device such as a printer 20 via parallel port 22, display screen 24 via display adapter 26, serial port 28, keyboard 30, fixed disk drive 32 and floppy disk drive 33 operative to receive a floppy disk 33A. Many other devices can be connected such as scanning device 34 connected via external interface 36, mouse 38 connected via serial port 28 and touch screen 40 connected directly. Many other devices or subsystems (not show) may be connected in a similar manner. Also, it is not necessary for all of the devices shown in FIG. 1 to be present to practice the present invention, as discussed below. The devices and subsystems may be interconnected in different ways from that shown in FIG. 1 without impairing the operation of the system. The operation of a computer system such as that shown in FIG. 1 is readily known in the art and is not discussed in detail in the present application. Source code to implement the present invention may be operably disposed in system memory 16 or stored on storage media such as fixed disk 32 or floppy disk 33A. An image database may also be stored on fixed disk 32. 
     Display screen 24 is similar to that in use on standard computers such as personal computers, workstations or mainframe computers employing a CRT screen or monitor. Various forms of user input devices may be used with the present invention. For example, a mouse input device 38 that allows a user to move a pointer displayed on the display screen in accordance with user hand movements in a standard user input device. A mouse usually includes one or more buttons on its surface so that the user may point to an object on the screen by moving the mouse and may select the object, or otherwise activate the object, be depressing one or more buttons on the mouse. Alternatively, a touch screen allows a user to point to objects on the screen to select an object and to move the selected object by pointing to a second position on the screen. Various buttons and controls may be displayed on the screen for activation by using the mouse or touch screen. Fixed disk drive 32 may be a hard disk drive or an optical drive or any medium suitable for storing a database of document images. 
     Overview of Querying Operation Performed on the Image Database 
     One unique and innovative feature of this invention is the intuitive manner in which image based search can be conducted on the documents in the database without requiring the user to build a representative document image as is required in the art. See e.g. co-pending and co-assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/609,641, entitled, &#34;Image Database Browsing and Query Using Texture Analysis&#34;, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety for all purposes. 
     In one particular embodiment of the invention depicted in FIG. 2A, the textual portion of documents is extracted from document images using OCR scanning and is made available in the database. This database can reside in any of multiple storage media in the computer system, such as the fixed disk 32 or system memory 16. The search procedure commences with an initial query step 102, in which the user inputs one or more keywords (i.e. text string or a combination of text strings) into the system via an input device such as terminal keyboard 30 and display screen 24. 
     Searching proceeds for the text string in the textual portions of the documents contained in the database in text based search step 104. If the text based search yields the document of interest, then the user may discontinue any further processing in step 106. Otherwise, documents containing the text string become the basis for image based search. In a preferred embodiment, features extracted from compressed representations of document images are available in the database. Documents meeting the text based search are grouped together in grouping step 108 to form clusters based upon similarity of the features extracted from each document image. A representative document image is selected in step 110 for each cluster of document images formed in the grouping step 108. 
     The representative document images are displayed to the user on the display 24 in display step 112. In a preferable embodiment, as depicted in FIG. 4, a compressed representation of each representative document image is displayed as an icon 402 using a web browser 404 as a user interface. A related embodiment displays uncompressed representative images. In the preferable embodiment, the user may select a particular cluster as the basis for further search by indicating to the system, with a mouse 38 or other input device, the representative document icon for the cluster which is to be the basis of further search as in step 114. 
     Search proceeds by applying the grouping step to the selected cluster of documents, sub-dividing this cluster into a new set of clusters 108, each having a new representative document image. Search continues until either the document is found 106, or the user chooses to discontinue the search 116. 
     In a related embodiment depicted in FIG. 2B, a compressed representation of each document image is made available in the database. Features are extracted from these compressed representations in an extraction step 107, interposed between document complete step 106 and grouping step 108. Search proceeds with grouping step 108 as in the prior embodiment. 
     Another related embodiment also includes the step of permitting the user to choose the number of clusters desired before the first grouping step 108, or at any time while navigating the database prior to a new application of the grouping step. 
     An alternative embodiment of the invention is depicted in FIG. 3A. As in the embodiment discussed above features extracted from compressed representations of document images are preferably available in the database. Documents are grouped together to form clusters in grouping step 208 based upon similarity of the features extracted from each document image. A representative document image is selected in step 210 for each cluster of document images formed in the grouping step 208. The representative document images are displayed to the user on the display 24 in display step 212. In a preferable embodiment, the system accepts from the user input parameters upon which further search may continue in step 214. Search continues until the user chooses to discontinue 216. 
     In a related embodiment depicted in FIG. 3B, a compressed representation of each document image is made available in the database. Features are extracted from these compressed representations in an extraction step 207 before grouping step 208. Search proceeds with grouping step 208 as in the prior embodiment. 
     Another related embodiment also includes the step of permitting the user to choose the number of clusters desired before the first grouping step 208, or at any time while navigating the database prior to a new application of the grouping step. 
     FIGS. 4-8 demonstrate the use of image processing techniques of compression, FIG. 4; features extraction, FIGS. 5, 6, 7 and 8; and grouping, FIG. 9 which form the basis of the search technique. These techniques are also discussed in a co-assigned copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/936,339 entitled &#34;Method and System for Document Image Feature Extraction,&#34; which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety for all purposes. 
     FIG. 10 depicts the use of a web browser to implement the display and user interface portions of the invention. 
     Compression Techniques 
     Compression reduces the cost of storing large quantities of document images in a database. Each document image is compressed via a compression technique such as wavelet compression (See e.g. IEEE Data Compression Conference, CREW: Compression with Reversible Embedded Wavelets, March 1995, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety for all purposes), or other techniques for compression known in the art. FIG. 4 is illustrative of wavelet compression, which operates by recursively applying a pyramidal transform to the image data 402, dividing the image into high frequency information 404 and low frequency information 406. CREW has several advantages in this application. It decomposes an image into high and low pass components relatively quickly. It gives a lossy compression of 20:1, with minimal noticeable image degradation. FIG. 5 is illustrative of the splitting off of low frequency image information 502 and high frequency image information 504 in one embodiment of the invention to extract different image features 506, 508. 
     In one embodiment of the invention, the low pass component of an image 410 is used as an icon for indexing into document image databases. 
     Feature Extraction 
     Feature extraction on the low frequency image information resulting from the compression step yields the statistical moments of the image pixel values as depicted in FIG. 6. In one particular embodiment of the invention, the mean 602 and variance 604 of the pixel values are the statistical moments which are calculated from low frequency information. FIGS. 7 and 8 are illustrative of features extraction applied to the high frequency image information resulting from the compression step. Connected components are extracted. In one particular embodiment of the invention, the features of total number of text words 702, pictures 704 and text columns 802, are extracted from the high frequency image information. Feature extraction is described in co-assigned copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/936,339 entitled, &#34;Method and System for Document Image Feature Extraction,&#34; (referenced above). 
     Grouping Document Images into Clusters 
     Document images are grouped together based upon feature information to form clusters of document images, each cluster containing document images having similar feature characteristics. One method of performing grouping is to employ a k-means algorithm. In one embodiment of the invention depicted in FIG. 9, grouping of images is performed into a selected number of groups 902, 904, 906. The desired number of groups may be chosen by the user, based upon the user&#39;s preference for granularity in the search vs the number of groups the user can track without promoting confusion. Grouping can be performed recursively on the documents within any group, forming a hierarchical organization in the database. 
     Displaying a Representative Document Image 
     A representative document image for display to the user is automatically selected by the system from each cluster of document images. In one embodiment of the invention, a center is calculated and the nearest image to that center is labeled as the characteristic image for each cluster generated by the grouping step. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, a web browser is used as the user interface for displaying document image representations and permitting the user to indicate which document image cluster should serve as the basis of further searching. As depicted in FIG. 10, a compressed representation of each representative document image is displayed as an icon 1002 using a web browser 1004 as a user interface. A related embodiment displays non-compressed representative images. In a preferable embodiment, the user may select a particular cluster as the basis for further search by indicating to the system, with a mouse 38 or other input device, the representative document icon for the cluster which is to be the basis of further search 1006. Search continues by applying the grouping step to the selected cluster of documents, sub-dividing this cluster into a new set of clusters 1008, each having a new representative document image. In an alternative embodiment non-compressed document images are displayed. 
     Searching the World Wide Web for Document Images 
     In a related embodiment, documents retrieved from World Wide Web search engines, e.g., Altavista or Infoseek, may be browsed using methods according to the invention. Users typically receive a multiplicity of documents from a multiplicity of different sources returned in response to a simple text-based query. It is difficult to determine which documents are actually of interest. However, users desirous of a particular type of document distinguishable by its visual appearance, e.g., a scientific paper that contains mostly two-column text, can quickly obtain only those documents using techniques according to the invention. 
     The invention has now been explained with reference to specific embodiments. Other embodiments will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art. It is therefore not intended that the invention be limited, except as indicated by the appended claims.