Method for fast up-scaling of color images and method for interpretation of digitally acquired documents

Abstract

Method for up-scaling a color image prior to performing subsequent processing on said color image, comprising the steps of converting the color image into multiple image layers distinguishable from each other and up-scaling at least one of said multiple image layers. The up-scaling is tuned towards the subsequent processing, for example luminance is upscaled at higher quality than chrominance. Further, a method for interpreting information present on digitally acquired documents, comprising the steps of: (i) determining a country; (ii) identifying a list of languages and character sets in use in said country; (iii) performing optical character recognition simultaneously using all languages and character sets of the list; (iv) performing field parsing to identify fields in the digitally acquired document on the basis of international as well as country-specific field recognition rules; (v) storing the recognized information according to the identified fields in a database.

1 .- 21 . (canceled) 
     
     
         22 . A method for interpreting information present on digitally acquired documents, comprising the steps of;
 (i) determining a country where the digitally acquired document originates from;   (ii) identifying a list of languages and character sets in use in said country;   (iii) performing optical character recognition on information present in the digitally acquired document, simultaneously using all languages and character sets of the list;   (iv) performing field parsing to identify fields in the digitally acquired document on the basis of international as well as country-specific field recognition rules;   (v) storing the recognized information according to the identified fields in a database.   
     
     
         23 . The method of  claim 22 , wherein step (i) comprises enabling a user to select the country from a predetermined list of countries. 
     
     
         24 . The method of  claim 22 , wherein step (iii) comprises using lexicons for all the identified languages of the list. 
     
     
         25 . The method of  claim 22 , wherein step (iv) comprises a step of keyword recognition on the basis of a dictionary with a country-specific part of an international part common to at least a large number of countries. 
     
     
         26 . The method of  claim 22 , wherein step (iv) comprises a step of specific pattern recognition wherein phone numbers, addresses and words containing keywords are recognized with country-specific routines. 
     
     
         27 . The method of  claim 26 , wherein (iv) further comprises a step of rule processing for identifying to which field the recognized specific patterns belong, said rule processing being common for all countries. 
     
     
         28 . A computer program product directly loadable into a memory of a computer, comprising software code portions for performing the steps of  claim 22  when said product is run on a computer. 
     
     
         29 . A computer program product according to  claim 28 , stored on a computer usable medium.