Patent Document ID: 8041119
Application ID: 11819215

Base Claim:
1. A method for determining the orientation of Chinese words, the method comprising the steps of: (a) scanning, using a scanner, a paper document containing a Chinese word to generate a word image, the word image having a plurality of pixels, including a plurality of dark pixels forming the Chinese word and a plurality of bright pixels; (b) generating, by a processor, a plurality of horizontal coordinates corresponding to a plurality of vertical lines of the word image; (c) counting, by the processor, a plurality of vertical projections, each of which is the number of dark pixels on the vertical line associated with each of the horizontal coordinates; (d) selecting, by the processor, a first coordinate and a second coordinate, corresponding to the largest and second largest vertical projections, respectively; (e) selecting, by the processor, a third coordinate between the first coordinate and the second coordinate; and (f) determining, by the processor, the orientation of the Chinese word as right-side up if the third coordinate is located to the left of a center of the word image and as upside down if the third coordinate is located to the right of the center of the word image.

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Claim 14:
14. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of: repeating steps (a) through (f) for determining the orientations of a plurality of word images in a document image; counting the total numbers of the word images that are right-side up and upside down, respectively; and determining the orientation of the Chinese words in the document image according to the orientation of those Chinese words with the larger total number.