Patent ID: 8526069

Claim:
A document reading apparatus that is movable between a plurality of positions along a surface of a document, comprising: a housing comprising an opening in a reading surface of the housing; an imaging element, disposed within the housing, configured to read the document via the opening; and a position detection element, disposed within the opening, wherein the position detection element visually blocks a region of the document from the imaging element at each position of the apparatus along the surface of the document; wherein the apparatus is configured to: at a first position: read an unobscured region of the document with the imaging element, and not read a first obscured region of the document that is visually blocked from the imaging element by the position detection element, to create a first acquired image that does not have image data at the first obscured region of the document; at a second position, where the position detection element visually blocks a second obscured region of the document and does not visually block the first obscured region: read the first obscured region; and incorporate image data of the first obscured region, taken at the second position, with the first acquired image, to thereby create a second acquired image that has image data both at the unobscured region and at the first obscured region.