Patent ID: 7508986

Claim:
A document recognition device for recognizing a registered document, which is similar to an input document image, from a plurality of registered documents, the document recognition device comprising: shape-feature extracting means which extracts the shape feature from a component included in the document image; color-information extracting means which extracts color information from the component included in the document image; similarity-degree calculating means which calculates the degree of similarity of shape between the document image and the registered document based on the shape feature extracted by the shape-feature extracting means; similarity-degree correcting means which calculates the degree of similarity of color information extracted by the color-information extracting means and corrects the degree of similarity calculated by the similarity-degree calculating means based on the degree of similarity of color information; determining means which determines whether the registered document is similar to the document image based on the degree of similarity obtained by the similarity-degree correcting means; and merging means which merges adjacent components among the components of the document image when the adjacent components have the same color information, wherein the similarity-degree calculating means calculates the degree of similarity of shape based on the components merged by the merging means and the component which are not merged, and the similarity-degree correcting means calculates the degree of similarity of color information and corrects the degree of similarity of shape.