Patent Document ID: 5404411
Application ID: 07634512
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An apparatus for improving image quality in printing systems, comprising: an image generation unit generating a source image comprising bit-image data; a user interface coupled to said image generation unit; a pattern matching board coupled to said image generation unit and including: a storage device including look-up tables (LUTs) and storing a plurality of sets of reference bitmap-image patterns and replacement bitmap-image patterns, each of said replacement bitmap-image patterns corresponding to one reference bitmap-image pattern, means for comparing a portion of said source image data to said reference bitmap-image patterns and substituting a replacement bit-map image pattern corresponding to the reference bit-map image pattern matching said portion of said stored image for said portion of said source image to form a corrected image, and means for generating a bit stream from said corrected image; a xerographic processor coupled to said pattern matching board, said xerographic processor receiving said bit stream from said pattern matching board and generating printed bitmap-images; an interface controller coupled to said pattern matching board, said image generation unit, and said xerographic processor, said interface controller controlling the coupling of said image generation unit to said pattern matching board and the coupling of said pattern matching board to said xerographic processor, said interface controller selecting one of said plurality of sets of reference bitmap-image patterns and corresponding set of replacement bitmap-image patterns for said comparing means in said pattern matching board; and means for generating control bits selecting on a pixel by pixel basis a particular pattern match board.