Patent ID: 7151860

Claim:
A document image correcting device correcting an input document image to be a properly orientated image, comprising: a line orientation determining unit determining whether a line orientation of an input document image is either vertical or horizontal; a character image extracting unit extracting a character image from the input document image; a character recognizing unit performing recognizing on the extracted character image; a character orientation detecting unit detecting whether or not to require a rotation, a rotational angle if the rotation is required, and mirror image flipping, which are intended for correcting the character image extracted by said character image extracting unit to be properly orientated, in correspondence with a result of a determination made by said line orientation determining unit; and a document image correcting unit correcting the input document image to be a properly orientated document image based on a result of detection made by said character orientation detecting unit; wherein said character orientation detecting unit detects as a properly orientated character image an image having a highest degree of likelihood of the recognition performed by said character recognizing unit among the images to which said image converting unit converts the extracted character image with different conversion methods, and detects whether or not to require the rotation, the rotational angle from the properly orientated image to the input image if the rotation is required, and the mirror image flipping; if there is only one image having a predetermined or higher degree of likelihood of the recognition performed by said character recognizing unit among the images to which said image converting unit converts the extracted character image with different conversion methods, said character orientation detecting unit detects the only one image as a properly orientated image, and detects whether or not to require the rotation, the rotational angle from the properly orientated image to the input image if the rotation is required, and the mirror image flipping; and said character orientation detecting unit detecting unit detects as a properly orientated image an image that has a highest degree of likelihood of the recognition performed by said character recognizing unit, and a character code which correspond to the image and is not predetermined, among the images to which said image converting unit converts the extracted image with different conversion methods, and detects whether or not to require the rotation, the rotational angle from the properly orientated image to the input image if the rotation is required, and the mirror image flipping.