Barcodes are used in many commercial applications, thus fast and robust reading is important. There are many different types of barcodes, some of them look similar while others are completely different. In this paper we introduce new fast and robust deep learning detector based on semantic segmentation approach. It is capable of detecting barcodes of any type simultaneously both in the document scans and in the wild by means of a single model. The detector achieves state-of-the-art results on the ArTe-Lab 1D Medium Barcode Dataset with detection rate 0.995. Moreover, developed detector can deal with more complicated object shapes like very long but narrow or very small barcodes. The proposed approach can also identify types of detected barcodes and performs at real-time speed on CPU environment being much faster than previous state-of-the-art approaches.
The early work in the domain of barcode detection from 2D images was motivated by the wide spread of mobile phones with cameras. @cite_4 proposes a method for finding 2D barcodes via corner detection and 1D barcodes through spiral scanning. @cite_5 introduces another method for 1D barcode detection based on decoding. Both approaches however require certain guidance from the user.
@cite_5 @cite_4
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This paper shows new algorithms and the implementations of image reorganization for EAN QR barcodes in mobile phones. The mobile phone system used here consists of a camera, mobile application processor, digital signal processor (DSP), and display device, and the source image is captured by the embedded camera device. The introduced algorithm is based on the code area found by four corners detection for 2D barcode and spiral scanning for 1D barcode using the embedded DSP. This algorithm is robust for practical situations and the DSP has good enough performance for the real-time recognition of the codes. The performance of our image processing is 66.7 frames sec for EAN code and 14.1 frames sec for QR code image processing, and this is sufficient performance for practical use. The released mobile phone had performance of 5-10 frames sec including OS and subsystem overheads. With the proliferation of built-in cameras barcode scanning on smartphones has become widespread in both consumer and enterprise domains. To avoid making the user precisely align the barcode at a dedicated position and angle in the camera image, barcode localization algorithms are necessary that quickly scan the image for possible barcode locations and pass those to the actual barcode decoder. In this paper, we present a barcode localization approach that is orientation, scale, and symbology (1D and 2D) invariant and shows better blur invariance than existing approaches while it operates in real time on a smartphone. Previous approaches focused on selected aspects such as orientation invariance and speed for 1D codes or scale invariance for 2D codes. Our combined method relies on the structure matrix and the saturation from the HSV color system. The comparison with three other real-time barcode localization algorithms shows that our approach outperforms the state of the art with respect to symbology and blur invariance at the expense of a reduced speed. Barcode reading mobile applications that identify products from pictures taken using mobile devices are widely used by customers to perform online price comparisons or to access reviews written by others. Most of the currently available barcode reading approaches focus on decoding degraded barcodes and treat the underlying barcode detection task as a side problem that can be addressed using appropriate object detection methods. However, the majority of modern mobile devices do not meet the minimum working requirements of complex general purpose object detection algorithms and most of the efficient specifically designed barcode detection algorithms require user interaction to work properly. In this paper, we present a novel method for barcode detection in camera captured images based on a supervised machine learning algorithm that identifies one-dimensional barcodes in the two-dimensional Hough Transform space. Our model is angle invariant, requires no user interaction and can be executed on a modern mobile device. It achieves excellent results for two standard one-dimensional barcode datasets: WWU Muenster Barcode Database and ArTe-Lab 1D Medium Barcode Dataset. Moreover, we prove that it is possible to enhance the overall performance of a state-of-the-art barcode reading algorithm by combining it with our detection method. The linear 1D barcode is the main tagging system for billions of products sold each day. Barcodes have many advantages but require a laser scanner for fast and robust scanning. Solutions exist to read barcodes from cell phones but they assume a carefully framed image within the field of view. This undermines the true potential of barcodes in a wide range of scenarios. In this paper we present a real time technique to detect barcodes in the wild from video streams. Our technique outperforms the state-of-the-art passive techniques both in accuracy and speed. Potential commercial applications enabled by such passive scanning system are also discussed in this paper. With the ubiquitous of cellular phones, mobile applications with 2D barcodes have drawn a lot of attentions in recent years. However, the previous works for extracting 2D barcodes from an image do not consider the distortion resulted from camera shake. Moreover, the previous works for extracting 2D barcodes from an image do not take a complex background into account. In this paper, therefore, we propose an efficient and effective algorithm to extract 2D barcode from a complex background in a camera-shaken image. Compared with previous approaches, our algorithm outperforms in not only smaller running time but also higher accuracy of the barcode recognition. In this paper we present an algorithm for the recognition of 1D barcodes using camera phones, which is highly robust regarding the the typical image distortions. We have created a database of barcode images, which covers typical distortions, such as inhomogeneous illumination, reflections, or blurriness due to camera movement. We present results from experiments with over 1,000 images from this database using a Matlab implementation of our algorithm, as well as experiments on the go, where a Symbian C++ implementation running on a camera phone is used to recognize barcodes in daily life situations. The proposed algorithm shows a close to 100 accuracy in real life situations and yields a very good resolution dependent performance on our database, ranging from 90.5 (640 × 480) up to 99.2 (2592 × 1944). The database is freely available for other researchers. This paper presents COBRA - a visible light communication (VLC) system for off-the-shelf smartphones. COBRA encodes information into specially designed 2D color barcodes and streams them between screen and camera of smartphones. Due to the directionality and short range of visible light, COBRA can preserve user privacy and security in many near field communication scenarios such as opportunistic data exchange between smartphones. We develop a new 2D color barcode for COBRA that is optimized for streaming between small-size screen and low-speed camera of smartphones. COBRA adapts the size and layout of code blocks in streamed barcodes to deal with the significant image blur in mobile environments, and adopts new image processing techniques to achieve real-time barcode stream decoding. Our approach is evaluated through extensive experiments on Android smartphones. Linear barcodes are the principal labeling system for retail products. Barcode reader apps found on smartphones always assume that the localization and framing of the barcode is performed manually by a sighted human operator. This is problematic for visually-impaired people since they don't know where to position the camera to scan the barcode. To solve this problem we propose a hand-free interface to detect barcode using a wearable camera. The user rotate a query product in front of him her and is informed when and where the barcode is visible. The challenge is to detect small barcodes at arm's length in a video with potentially large motion blur. In this paper we propose a novel technique for barcode detection using very little computation (adapted to wearable systems), presenting very good robustness to blur and size variations, and able to run on HD video streams. The proposed system perform significantly better than the state-of-the-art methods on existing public datasets, while being much faster. A new and challenging egocentric product video dataset is also provided with this paper. A 2D color barcode can hold much more information than a binary barcode. Barcodes are often intended for consumer use where using a cellphone, a consumer can take an image of a barcode on a product, and retrieve relevant information about the product. The barcode must be read using computer vision techniques. While a color barcode can hold more information, it makes this vision task in consumer scenarios unusually challenging. We present our approach to the localization and segmentation of a 2D color barcode in such challenging scenarios, along with its evaluation on a diverse collection of images of Microsoft's recently launched high capacity color barcode (HCCB). We exploit the unique trait of barcode reading: the barcode decoder can give the vision algorithm feedback, and develop a progressive strategy to achieve both - high accuracy in diverse scenarios as well as computational efficiency. Camera cellphones have become ubiquitous, thus opening a plethora of opportunities for mobile vision applications. For instance, they can enable users to access reviews or price comparisons for a product from a picture of its barcode while still in the store. Barcode reading needs to be robust to challenging conditions such as blur, noise, low resolution, or low-quality camera lenses, all of which are extremely common. Surprisingly, even state-of-the-art barcode reading algorithms fail when some of these factors come into play. One reason resides in the early commitment strategy that virtually all existing algorithms adopt: The image is first binarized and then only the binary data are processed. We propose a new approach to barcode decoding that bypasses binarization. Our technique relies on deformable templates and exploits all of the gray-level information of each pixel. Due to our parameterization of these templates, we can efficiently perform maximum likelihood estimation independently on each digit and enforce spatial coherence in a subsequent step. We show by way of experiments on challenging UPC-A barcode images from five different databases that our approach outperforms competing algorithms. Implemented on a Nokia N95 phone, our algorithm can localize and decode a barcode on a VGA image (640 × 480, JPEG compressed) in an average time of 400-500 ms. The use of colors increases the information storage capacities in barcodes. Increasing the number of colors to encode information makes the decoding a challenging task due to the dependency of the surface color on the illuminant spectrum, viewing parameters, printing device and material, color fading in addition to other nuisance parameters. A popular solution is the use of a color palette of reference colors printed with barcode. The decoding becomes more challenging if a mobile phone as a decoding device is used due to the capture of images from different distances as well as angles. In addition, the barcode images are often blurry because of incorrect focus or camera shake. We present an iterative decoding algorithm that decodes the colors of all barcode patches across the barcode by minimizing the overall observation error. Our method is able to decode colors in presence of blur using a small number of colors yet ensuring high information density. Barcode technology is essential in automatic identification, and is used in a wide range of real-time applications. Different code types and applications impose special problems, so there is a continuous need for solutions with improved performance. Several methods exist for code localization, that are well characterized by accuracy and speed. Particularly, high-speed processing places need reliable automatic barcode localization, e.g. conveyor belts and automated production, where missed detections cause loss of profit. Our goal is to detect automatically, rapidly and accurately the barcode location with the help of extracted image features. We propose a new algorithm variant, that outperforms in both accuracy and efficiency other detectors found in the literature using similar ideas, and also improves on the detection performance in detecting 2D codes compared to our previous algorithm. There is increased interest in the use of color barcodes to encode more information per area unit than regular, black-and-white barcodes. For example, Microsoft's HCCB technology uses 4 or 8 colors per patch. Unfortunately, the observed color of a surface depends as much on the illuminant spectrum (and other viewing parameters) as on the surface reflectivity, which complicates the task of decoding the content of the barcode. A popular solution is to append to the barcode a “palette” with the reference colors. In this paper, we propose a new approach to color barcode decoding, one that does not require a reference color palette. Our algorithm decodes groups of color bars at once, exploiting the fact that joint color changes can be represented by a low-dimensional space. Decoding a group of bars (a “barcode element”) is thus equivalent to searching for the nearest subspace in a dataset. We also propose algorithms to select subsets of barcode elements that can be decoded with low error probability. Our experimental results show that our barcode decoding algorithm enables substantial information rate increase with respect to system that display a color palette, at a very low decoding error rate. The finite rate of innovation (FRI) principle is developed for sampling a class of non-bandlimited signals that have a finite number of degrees of freedom per unit of time, i.e., signals with FRI. This sampling scheme is later extended to three classes of sampling kernels with compact support and applied to the step edge reconstruction problem by treating the image row by row. In this paper, we regard step edges as 2D FRI signals and reconstruct them block by block. The step edge parameters are obtained from the 2D moments of a given image block. Experimentally, our technique can reconstruct the edge more precisely and track the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) closely with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) larger than 4 dB on synthetic step edge images. Experiments on real images show that our proposed method can reconstruct the step edges under practical conditions, i.e., in the presence of various types of noise and using a real sampling kernel. The results on locating the corners of data matrix barcodes using our method also outperform some state-of-the-art barcode decoders. Computing the epipolar geometry between cameras with very different viewpoints is often problematic as matching points are hard to find. In these cases, it has been proposed to use information from dynamic objects in the scene for suggesting point and line correspondences. We propose a speed up of about two orders of magnitude, as well as an increase in robustness and accuracy, to methods computing epipolar geometry from dynamic silhouettes. This improvement is based on a new temporal signature: motion barcode for lines. Motion barcode is a binary temporal sequence for lines, indicating for each frame the existence of at least one foreground pixel on that line. The motion barcodes of two corresponding epipolar lines are very similar, so the search for corresponding epipolar lines can be limited only to lines having similar barcodes. The use of motion barcodes leads to increased speed, accuracy, and robustness in computing the epipolar geometry. Computing the epipolar geometry between cameras with very different viewpoints is often very difficult. The appearance of objects can vary greatly, and it is difficult to find corresponding feature points. Prior methods searched for corresponding epipolar lines using points on the convex hull of the silhouette of a single moving object. These methods fail when the scene includes multiple moving objects. This paper extends previous work to scenes having multiple moving objects by using the “Motion Barcodes”, a temporal signature of lines. Corresponding epipolar lines have similar motion barcodes, and candidate pairs of corresponding epipoar lines are found by the similarity of their motion barcodes. As in previous methods we assume that cameras are relatively stationary and that moving objects have already been extracted using background subtraction. We describe a new smartphone app called BLaDE (Barcode Localization and Decoding Engine), designed to enable a blind or visually impaired user find and read product barcodes. Developed at The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, the BLaDE Android app has been released as open source software, which can be used for free or modified for commercial or non-commercial use. Unlike popular commercial smartphone apps, BLaDE provides real-time audio feedback to help visually impaired users locate a barcode, which is a prerequisite to being able to read it. We describe experiments performed with five blind visually impaired volunteer participants demonstrating that BLaDE is usable and that the audio feedback is key to its usability. The CyberCode is a visual tagging system based on a 2D-barcode technology and provides several features not provided by other tagging systems. CyberCode tags can be recognized by the low-cost CMOS or CCD cameras found in more and more mobile devices, and it can also be used to determine the 3D position of the tagged object as well as its ID number. This paper describes examples of augmented reality applications based on CyberCode, and discusses some key characteristics of tagging technologies that must be taken into account when designing augmented reality environments. Detection of rare variants by resequencing is important for the identification of individuals carrying disease variants. Rapid sequencing by new technologies enables low-cost resequencing of target regions, although it is still prohibitive to test more than a few individuals. In order to improve cost trade-offs, it has recently been suggested to apply pooling designs which enable the detection of carriers of rare alleles in groups of individuals. However, this was shown to hold only for a relatively low number of individuals in a pool, and requires the design of pooling schemes for particular cases. We propose a novel pooling design, based on a compressed sensing approach, which is both general, simple and efficient. We model the experimental procedure and show via computer simulations that it enables the recovery of rare allele carriers out of larger groups than were possible before, especially in situations where high coverage is obtained for each individual. Our approach can also be combined with barcoding techniques to enhance performance and provide a feasible solution based on current resequencing costs. For example, when targeting a small enough genomic region ( 100 base-pairs) and using only 10 sequencing lanes and 10 distinct barcodes, one can recover the identity of 4 rare allele carriers out of a population of over 4000 individuals. Colorizing two–dimensional (2-D) barcodes is a promising modality for improvement on design and data capacity. The number of colors employed in recent 2-D color barcodes is limited less than 8. To increase the number of recognizable colors, we propose a color recognition method which classifies 64 colors, using an extended color space and pattern recognition techniques. The proposed method employs 4 seed colors embedded within 64-color code to prevent influences from environment illumination. In the proposed method, we extend the color representation for each code color in 2-D barcode from three components to higher number component. And a classifier is trained using the extended colors captured from several environmental lighting conditions. The classifier is selectable. In this paper, artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM) and nearest neighbor (NN) are employed as the classifier. The experimental results shows that the proposed method achieves MSER less than 3.0 . Comparing the number of seed colors, 4 seed color is comparable to that using 8 seed color. SVM achieves the best recognition performance of 1.17 SER. These results suggest that 64-color recognition is possible by the proposed method.