Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 10
Claim 1
Independent Claim
103 words
A method for electronically processing at least one document stored as an electronic document image containing undecoded information to identify a selected portion thereof, characterised by segmenting said at least one document image into image units, each having an undecoded information content; classifying the relative information content of at least some of said image units, without decoding the image units being classified or reference to decoded image data, based on an evaluation of predetermined morphological image characteristics of said image units being classified; and selecting image units for further processing according to the classification of said image units obtained in said classifying step.
Claim 2
Dependent Claim
35 words
A method as claimed in claim 1, characterised in that said evaluation of predetermined image characteristics includes a determination of whether said image units being classified are located within selected regions within the document image.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
42 words
A method as claimed in claim 1 or claim 2, characterised in that said classification is also based on a determination of the relative frequencies with which image units having similar predetermined image characteristics are present among the image units being classified.
Claim 4
Independent Claim
65 words
A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 3, characterised in that said predetermined image characteristics include at least one of a dimension, font, typeface, number of ascender elements, number of descender elements, pixel density, pixel cross- sectional characteristic, the location of image units with respect to neighboring image units, vertical position, horizontal inter-image spacing, and contour characteristic of said image units.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
21 words
A method as claimed in claim 4, characterised in that said evaluation of predetermined image characteristics is a morphological image evaluation.
Claim 6
Independent Claim
99 words
A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 5, characterised in that prior to performing said classifying step, said image units are processed to discriminate which of said image units do not contain sufficient information content for useful evaluation of the subject matter of the information contained in said document image; said classifying step is performed only with the image units not discriminated by said discrimination processing; and said discrimination processing is performed based on an evaluation of predetermined image characteristics of said image units, without decoding the image units or reference to decoded image data.
Claim 7
Independent Claim
46 words
A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 6, characterised by a document corpus containing a plurality of documents is processed, and said segmenting, classifying and selecting steps are performed with respect to the document image for each document in the document corpus.
Claim 8
Dependent Claim
29 words
A method as claimed in claim 7, characterised by classifying the documents in the document corpus according to the classification of the image units obtained in said classifying step.
Claim 9
Independent Claim
56 words
A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 6, characterised in that said document includes word text and said image units include image units corresponding to word images in said document image, and/or wherein said document includes numbers and said image units include image units corresponding to number images in said document image.
Claim 10
Dependent Claim
38 words
A method as claimed in claim 9, characterised in that said document includes symbols and graphical representations, and said image units include image units corresponding to symbol images and corresponding to graphical representation images in said document image.