Because of the rapid development of the information communication industry, to digitalize images is a well known and an important technology. Digital image pickup apparatuses such as digital scanners, digital cameras, and digital video cameras are used worldwide in lots of fields. Among the advantages of digitalizing images is that digital data-processing apparatuses such as personal computers (PC) and personal digital assistants (PDA) can process these digitalized data obtained by the digital image pickup apparatuses. Then the processed data will be saved or recognized for some applications.
For example, the digitalizing process usually comprises the following steps. At first, the scanner scans a page of words to provide a digital image file, and then scans another page of words to provide another digital image file. The personal computer will execute an optical character recognition (OCR) program to convert these digital image files into respective text files.
The usual procedure to scan and recognize documents includes steps of:                (a) lifting the cover of a flatbed scanner and putting the first document on the scanning window;        (b) closing the cover and scanning the first document;        (c) saving the first image data as a first image file in the personal computer operated with the scanner;        (d) executing an optical character recognition program to convert the first image file into a first text file;        (e) lifting the cover of the flatbed scanner again, withdrawing the first document, and putting the second document on the scanning window;        (f) closing the cover and scanning the second document;        (g) saving the second image data as a second image file in the personal computer operated with the scanner; and        (h) converting the second image file into a second text file by the optical character recognition program.        
Now we have two text files. Hence, after the prior scanning procedure completes, the obtained text files are the same in number as the scanned pages. The users must perform an additional step to combine these text files into an integrated text file if the contents of these pages compose an article. It really wastes time. Even if an auto-feeding scanner is applied to the case, the steps including scanning, recognizing, and integrating still cannot be executed automatically. Only the steps of lifting cover, replacing pages, and closing cover can be omitted. Therefore, a more efficient method for integrating the scanned data is desired.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds