Patent ID: 7305131

Claim:
A method of extracting from an input image a graphical bar code containing graphically encoded information, comprising: computing estimates of initial position coordinates for a graphical bar code candidate detected in the input image; evolving a template from an initial state, through successive states defined by different respective positions and different respective skew angles of the template in relation to the graphical bar code candidate, to a final state in accordance with a process of optimizing an objective function characterizing respedtive regions of the graphical bar code candidate enclosed by the template in respective ones of the states, wherein the initial state is defined by the computed estimates of the initial position coordinates and the final state is defined by final position coordinate estimates for the graphical bar code candidate; and trimming non-graphical bar code regions from the input image based on the final position coordinate estimates for the graphical bar code candidate to produce a trimmed graphical bar code candidate for decoding.