ScanFix Xpress

ScanFix Xpress is delivered as a .NET software development toolkit, ActiveX COM software development toolkit, and also as Activities for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), offering powerful bitonal document image enhancement technology. ScanFix Xpress helps you create cleaner and smaller image files, ultimately resulting in higher OCR rates.
Clean up images using deskew, noise removal, character smoothing, dot shading removal, hole punch removal, line removal, text repair, auto inverse text correction, auto negate, auto binarization, auto border crop, image registration, blank page detection, and rotate. ScanFix includes ImagXpress Document.
Here are some key features of "ScanFix Xpress":

Technical Notes

· Programming environments: Win32 visual development environments including Vista (see "Pegasus Imaging Toolkits and the Windows Vista Environment" technical bulletin)
· Sample code is included for: VB.NET, Visual C#, Delphi .NET, VB, VC++
· Deploys within .NET as a managed control (see "Building Robust Imaging Components for the Microsoft .NET Platform" white paper)
· Use ScanFix Xpress Activities for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in your own workflow applications or applications which host the WF runtime such as MOSS (Sharepoint) using Visual Studio 2005 or higher.
· Can be used in any development environment that hosts ActiveX/COM controls
· Confidence values are available for many operations
· User configurable debug settings to control level of detail

Image Input, Image Output, and Image Handling

· Now provided through the included ImagXpress Document v8 .NET component and ActiveX/COM control (Read the Full ImagXpress Document v8 Product Description)
· Features include image viewing, compression, conversion, TWAIN scanning, annotation, printing, image processing, and more

Deskew

· Automatically straighten crooked images and report correction angle
· Deskew images in a fraction of a second
· Uses content of the images, not just the document
· User configurable High Quality vs. High Speed setting
· High Quality sets a higher number of places to check around the image, ultimately providing the highest level of deskew accuracy, but the image processing speed is slower
· High Speed sets a lower number of places to check around the image, ultimately providing the fastest image processing speed, but offers a slightly lower level of accuracy

Noise Removal

· Remove random specks or noise from images
· Configurable user specification of speck size, or use automatic settings
· Special Isolated Despeckle algorithm prevents removal of desired dots such as punctuation

Dot Shading Removal

· Automatically remove dot shading surrounding text for improved OCR accuracy
· Remove scanner noise caused by colored backgrounds (gray, blue, etc.)
· Reduce files sizes caused by additional pixels, without destroying text

Hole Punch & Blob Removal

· Remove hole punches and larger areas of black
· User configurable threshold settings
· Specify full page or a specific area of interest
· Reduce file sizes and storage requirements with cleaner pages
· Return count of objects found

Line Removal

· Automatically remove solid or broken lines (both horizontal and vertical) from scanned forms and documents
· Automatically repair text that intersects with lines (fill broken characters), essential for forms processing

Comb Removal (commonly used in ICR forms)

· Automatically remove data entry combs from forms
· Automatically repair text that intersects with lines (fill broken characters), essential for forms processing

Character Completion & Smoothing

· Repair, smooth and thicken incomplete characters
· Repair broken or incomplete characters to create complete characters
· Especially good on poor dot matrix text
· Smoothes ragged edges on letters
· Thickens or thins letters as needed

Auto Inverse Text Correction

· Detect and automatically convert inverted text zones
· Change white-on-black text to normal black-on-white
· Recognize inverse zones in any shape, including circular
· Remove the fill color of text
· Reduce file sizes by eliminating unnecessary black pixels

Auto Negate

· Automated reporting of black on white (normal) or white on black (negative) images
· Automated correction (user configurable to simply report or to automatically correct)
· Creates black on white images, which are often required for many other ScanFix image processing actions

Auto Binarize

· Automatically convert grayscale and color images to black and white, and clean up noisy images
· Optimize binarization results using the user configurable options

Auto Border Crop

· Automatically convert black borders to white
· Reduce image file size (both physical dimensions and compressed file size)
· Automated border crop (user configurable to simply report or to automatically correct)
· Use on microfilm or small document images that have been overscanned

Image Registration

· Register the image "contents" to be a specified distance from the top and/or left side of the page (for example, specify to put the text ½ inch from the top and/or ½ inch from the left side of the image edge)
· Use with zonal recognition to establish the position of the text relative to the edge of the image, to establish the expected location of a zone

Blank Page / Blank Rectangle Detection

· Identify and report blank pages, or blank areas of interest
· Configure settings to accommodate bleed-through or noisy images (i.e. ignore hole punches)
· Reduce file sizes and storage requirements by eliminating blank pages

Sub-Image Processing

· Separate out an area from the original document image prior to image processing
· Speeds up processing and outputs only the smaller area of interest

Reporting of Process Results

· Reports the location of lines, shaded regions and inverse text regions for forms recognition
· Useful in forms processing solutions for form identification and registration

Additional Image Processing

· Flip
· Mirror
· Rotate
· Smooth-Zoom
· Scale
· Set Resolution