Patent Document ID: 5444797
Application ID: 08047515
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An automatic script determining apparatus for determining a script-type of a script text portion of an image on a document, the script text portion including alphanumeric elements, phonetic elements, ideographic elements or pictographic elements, the script text portion comprising a plurality of characters, the apparatus comprising: a scanner for scanning the script text portion and outputting a digital data signal representative of the script text portion, the digital data signal comprising a plurality of signal portions, each signal portion comprising data representative of a corresponding one of the plurality of pixels of the script text portion; a memory for storing the digital data signal; and a controller for determining the script-type of the script text portion of the image, comprising: connected component generating means for determining a plurality of connected components from the plurality of signal portions, each character of the script text portion comprising at least one of the plurality of connecting components; bounding box determining means for determining a corresponding bounding box around the plurality of signal portions for each one of the plurality of connected components; centroid determining means for determining a centroid of each corresponding bounding box; feature determining means for locating script features, corresponding to at least one predetermined type of script feature, for each corresponding bounding box; spatial distribution determining means for determining a spatial distribution of the located script features of the plurality connected components; comparison means for comparing the determined spatial distribution to predetermined spatial distributions; and output means for outputting a signal indicative of a determined script type of the script text portion of the document.