1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to processing techniques for content detection in images, extraction and recognition. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for using a web browser plug-in for content detection in images and image frame extraction to generate input for content recognition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computers and electronic documents are restricted to use in environments where electronic documents are manipulated using computers and output by the computer to printers and printed on paper. Once an electronic document is printed out on paper, manipulations on the paper version and the electronic version of the document are independent. Printing and copying technology has not been able to bridge the gap between static printed media (i.e., paper documents), and the dynamic electronic media that includes the likes of digital communication, networking, electronic information dissemination, electronic advertising, on-line entertainment and electronic commerce.
The advent and ever-increasing popularity of smaller portable computing devices and personal electronic devices, such as personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, cellular telephones (e.g., cellular camera phones) and digital cameras over the past few years, has expanded the concept of documents to include their electronic version by making the available in an electronically readable and searchable form and by introducing interactive multimedia capabilities, which are unparalleled by traditional printed media.
There continue to be problems in the prior art in bridging the gap between the world of electronic documents on one hand and the world of paper documents on the other. In particular, it is still very difficult and/or computationally expensive to use a printed document to access or even find the electronic document from which the paper document was generated. A key obstacle to identifying and finding an electronic document corresponding to a printed document is the conversion of the printed document to electronic form that can be used for matching the paper document to electronic document. While capturing an image of the printed document has become trivial with the proliferation of cell phones with cameras or scanners, there is no way to use such low quality images for electronic document retrieval. Even when the image is high quality, the computations necessary for recognition can be significant and inaccurate.
One particular problem with the prior art is that the few types of recognition available require application specific recognition/communication software to be installed on the client device prior to runtime.
Yet another problem with the prior art that there are no methods to effectively interface the electronic world using a combination of paper and everyday computing devices. There are a variety of mechanisms such as tool bars, button and other interfaces that can be displayed on a computer screen alone and that are used with input devices like mouse-type controllers and keyboards. However, there is no such interface for working with paper or other tangible media and electronic documents at the same time.