CONTENT ANALYSIS OF DOCUMENT IMAGES USING THE ADAM ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY

An essential part of image analysis is the location and identification of objects within the image. Noise and clutter make this identification problematic, and the size of the image may present computational difficulties. To overcome these problems, a window onto the image is used to focus onto small areas. Conventionally, it is still necessary to know the size of the object to be searched for in order to select a window of the correct size. A method is described for object location and classification which allows the use of a small window to identify large objects in the image. The window focusses on features in the image, and an associative memory recalls evidence for objects from these features, avoiding the necessity of knowing the dimensions of the objects to be detected.