Digitization of deformed documents using a high-speed multi-camera array

Abstract

Digitization of documents recently has become an important technology. However, it is difficult for existing scanners to read books at high speed and at high resolution simultaneously. In order to realize a promising new book scanning system, we aimed to scan a book containing many pages by using multiple high-speed cameras to acquire images while continuously flipping through the pages, then integrating the images viewed by different cameras to digitize all of the pages. However, high-accuracy integration with the non-uniform rectification required for such input images is a challenging task because the sheets of the document are deformed and the image resolution is so high that misalignment can easily occur. This paper proposes a new multi-camera-array book scanning system and a method of achieving high-accuracy three-dimensional deformation estimation and high-resolution rectification of the distorted document images with a system configuration in which multiple high-speed cameras are arranged with small overlapping captured areas. Experiments using the developed system showed that high-accuracy document images were reconstructed. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.