Granted Patent B2

US 8,446,652 · App. 11/750,191 · Granted May 21, 2013

Abstract

Claims (52)

1. A method of processing a project having a plurality of source documents into scanned images of the source documents, comprising:

scanning, with at least one scanner device, at least two source documents of the project to produce a digital scanned image for each of the at least two source documents;

analyzing, with at least one processor, each of the scanned images to measure at least one characteristic of each of the at least two source documents;

determining, with the at least one processor, a range of characteristics based on the measured characteristics, wherein the range of characteristics is bound by a highest measured characteristic and a lowest measured characteristic, and encompasses the measured characteristic for each of the at least two source documents;

storing, on at least one storage medium, source document quality metrics for the project, the source document quality metrics comprising the range of characteristics;

scanning, with the at least one scanner device, each of the plurality of source documents in the project a second time to create a second set of electronic image files representative of all physical documents from the project; and

storing, on the at least one storage medium, the one or more electronic image files and a relationship of the one or more electronic files to the source document quality metrics,

wherein the at least one characteristic comprises a selection from a group consisting of: color range; grayscale range; luminosity; contrast and noisiness.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, using the source document quality metrics prior to the second scanning step to determine target quality metrics for the scanned images.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, using the source document quality metrics prior to the second scanning step to set scanning parameters of a scanning device.

4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

during the second scanning step, determining scanned image quality metrics;

comparing the scanned image quality metrics to the target quality metrics; and

during the second scanning step, adjusting scanning parameters of a scanning device based at least in part on the comparison of the scanned image quality metrics to the target quality metrics.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

during or after the second scanning step, determining scanned image quality metrics;

using the scanned image quality metrics to estimate a cost of post-production activities.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, using the source document image quality metrics to decide whether to request a document to be rescanned.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

during or after the second scanning step, determining scanned image quality metrics;

using the scanned image quality metrics to determine a level of effort required to perform optical character recognition of the scanned images.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

during or after the second scanning step, determining scanned image quality metrics;

using the scanned image quality metrics to identify a type of post-production processing that will improve the quality of the scanned images.

9. The method of claim 3 , wherein the scanning parameters of the scanning device include one or more selections from a group of scanning parameters of a scanning device, consisting of: lamp brightness and contrast.

10. A production document scanning system, comprising:

one or more electronic scanning devices configured to create electronic files from physical documents; and

a source document quality assessment subsystem having a processor configured to:

receive from the one or more scanning devices a first set of electronic files, the first set of electronic files representative of at least two physical documents of a project comprising a plurality of physical documents;

analyze the first set of electronic files to measure at least one characteristic of each of the at least two physical documents;

determine a range of characteristics based on the measured characteristics, wherein the range of characteristics is bound by a highest measured characteristic and a lowest measured characteristic, and encompasses the measured characteristic for each of the at least two source documents;

store, on at least one storage medium, source document quality metrics for the project, the source document quality metrics comprising the range of characteristics;

receive a second set of electronic files from the one or more scanning devices representative of all physical documents from the project; and

cause the second set of electronic files to be stored with a relationship of the second set of electronic files to the source document quality metrics,

wherein the at least one characteristic comprises a selection from a group consisting of: color range; grayscale range; luminosity; contrast and noisiness.

11. The production document scanning system of claim 10 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

determine target image quality metrics based at least in part on the one or more source document quality metrics; and

couple the target image quality metrics to the second set of electronic files.

12. The production document scanning system of claim 10 further comprising an arrangement configured to control scanning parameters in relation to one or more of source document quality metrics, and post production activities.

13. The production document scanning system of claim 12 , wherein the post-production activities comprise one or more selections from a group of post-production activities consisting of: machine-implemented optical character recognition, manual keying of document data, and presentation to users.

14. A method of processing a project having a plurality of source documents into scanned images of the source documents, comprising:

scanning, with at least one scanner device, at least two source documents of the project to produce a digital scanned image for each of the at least two source documents;

analyzing, with at least one processor, each of the digital scanned images to measure at least one characteristic of each of the at least two source documents, wherein the at least one characteristic comprises a selection from a group consisting of:

color range;

grayscale range;

luminosity;

contrast; and

noisiness;

determining, with the at least one processor, a range of characteristics based on the measured characteristics, wherein the range of characteristics is bound by a highest measured characteristic and a lowest measured characteristic, and encompasses the measured characteristic for each of the at least two source documents;

storing, on at least one storage medium, source document quality metrics for the project, the source document quality metrics comprising the range of characteristics;

scanning, with the at least one scanner device, each of the plurality of source documents in the project a second time to create a second set of electronic image files representative of all physical documents from the project; and

storing, on the at least one storage medium, the one or more electronic image files and a relationship of the one or more electronic image files to the source document quality metrics.

Assignments (11)