IMAGING PROCESS FOR FORMING CLEAR AND LEGIBLE BINARY IMAGE

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an improved scanning system and process capable of forming a clear and legible binary image requiring no visual inspection of image quality. SOLUTION: The imaging process for forming a clear and legible binary image of a document being scanned comprises step (a) for taking in the document as a gray scale image in digital system, step (b) for converting the gray scale image into a binary image by performing an image adaptive threshold value process, step (c) for inspecting the binary image and determining an image noise index value indicative of the quantity of undesired artifact or image information loss, step (d) for making a decision whether the image noise index value is equal to or larger than a specified threshold value or not, and step (e) for performing an image correction process when a decision is made that the image noise index value is equal to or larger than a specified threshold value and forming a clear and legible binary image. COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO