IP BOARDS AND SOFTWARE DON'T JUST HAWK, THEY DELIVER
They won't "Revolutionize Your Information System!!!" They don't "Reinvent Your Business!!!" All IP boards and software do for you is make your scanner more efficient, your images better, your sys
Trying to install and maintain an imaging system means making myriad choices. Pick the right hardware. Match it with compatible software. Implement both in a real-world situation. Good luck! To complicate your options further, many imaging technologies delve into abstract theory or arcane algorithms. Not Image Processing products. Their purpose is clear -- to turn your paper documents into high-quality digital data faster and better than you can without them.
The first thing to consider when checking out these goods is to remember what not to look at. Image processing in document management is a different beast than many other "imaging" applications like multimedia, full-motion video editing and super-high-resolution industrial imaging. At first glance, the specs of graphics accelerator boards, frame grabbers and video capture boards make them look like document processing boards. They aren't.
Document management IP boards connect your scanner physically to your host computer or network. IP software knits the various drivers and modules between the hardware together and gives the user graphical controls.
Together, the boards and software perform various functions on the paper's image to get it into your databases and storage systems more quickly and with greater accuracy.
Three Ways to Beef Up Your System
Boards improve the three major processing jobs -- when you scan paper in, print paper out, and display the image on a monitor. Some multifunction boards beef up all three. Some concentrate on just one. In this capacity, boards take the processing burden off the CPU or scanner and onto themselves. Boards and software also usually compress and decompress image files, another job that can tie up the host system.
As imaging technology gets more intelligent, other specific tasks have to happen if you're going to have an effective imaging application. These include:
Text Annotation. Write text strings onto images to make indexing easier later in the process. Identify images by time, date and page numbers anywhere on the image.
Image Zoning. Extract data from specific areas on an image. Use OCR/ICR only on the stuff you want from the physical page.
Barcode Detection and Reading. Identify and read barcodes anywhere on a page, at any angle (skewed, horizontal, vertical, even upside down), on any document image -- faxed or scanned. Again, performing this function at the time of capture reduces processing time for the CPU later on. Some other barcode functions let you save to a file that associates the file name with the barcode information.
Filtering. Clean up images by reducing file sizes for compressed images. Sharpen edges, remove bumps, smooth lines, remove spots and fill in staple holes. Lighten or darken images overall.
Deskewing. Straighten images according to the image's edges, lines or text.
Despeckling. Remove unwanted dots -- stray marks, scanner noise, creases, folds, spittle -- from the image. Reduce storage requirements by 10 - 50 %. Improve OCR. The size of the removed speckles is programmable.
Black Border Removal. Also known as cropping. Remove all the black pixels connected from the edge of the image to margins established by the user.
Duplex Scanning. Scan two-sided documents.
Auto Page Registration. Place different-sized images in a consistent area for viewing. For example, after cropping certain images, they can be registered to the upper-left-hand corner, so all images will be placed in the same relative area for retrieval and viewing.
Scaling. Set parameters so you can output images automatically to different types of displays or printers. Increase certain documents from 200 dpi to 300 dpi. Set some pages to 272 dpi for laser printing. Reduce other pages to 100 dots per inch.
Rotation. You can rotate images 90, 180 or 270 degrees for the best viewing orientation under your space constraints.
Pixel Inversion. Change a negative image to a positive or change a positive image to a negative image. Some scanners, fax machines and software reverse images, making "negative"-looking images. Invert them.
Repeat Jobs. Create a "To Do List" template. Keep it. When certain redundant documents get scanned, the entire set of options can be saved to a separate file named for the job.
Mark Sense. Recognize and extract your data easily from those forms that use "fill-in-the-blank" or check-mark zones.
Image Check. Select certain images for viewing after image files have been processed. Look through these images in order of processing from start to finish or vice versa.
Audit Trail. Preserve a record of all files selected -- their destination, the functions performed, whether the image was successfully processed or not, the file name, the file date and the time of processing. Review the entire process at any time to verify accuracy.
Grayscale. Bitonal technology scans one-bit images. Grayscale technology scans eight-bit images, offering more information but requiring more processing power. Some IP boards, such as those made by Dunord (Montreal, CN 514-284-3123), make up for this by handling native grayscale images.
The Who and the What of the 'Ware
Now that you know what this stuff does, look at the various ways you can get it. A few hardware-only products serve limited purposes. An increasing number of applications need only software to bring your system up to snuff. But the vast majority of present-day high-volume imaging apps need a hardware/software combination.
Do you need to scan more than 40 single-sided pages a minute? You still need a board to run an imaging system at a decent speed. Want to work on other things while processing? You need both high-revving hardware and software controls.
Here's where things can get complicated again. Some software is standalone and off-the-shelf.
Some of it comes as a C-level or VB toolkit. Some is even available as source code. Some boards support any flavor of platform. Some work only with specific driver code.
Whatever your formula, the following companies can help you raise the productivity of your processing another notch:
Image Access (Boca Raton, FL 561-995-8334) offers a range of both hardware and software. On the software side, BSCAN ($2,000) offers a scanning substation setup that works with other document image management systems in network, Unix and mainframe environments.
It runs under Windows on a standalone or networked PC. It can be configured as a dedicated scan station, an archive retrieval system or a workstation. You need Image Access hardware to run BSCAN.
BSCANLite ($700) concentrates on post-scan processing and indexing in a software-only solution. Image Access says their software rivals hardware image processing systems, with a flip rate of more than 25 pages per second.
Rotate, scale and deskew in under one second per image. BSCANLite costs less, since you don't need any hardware.
The HIRES-DOC board ($400) performs decompression and scale-to-gray processing for CCITT and TIFF images. Other functions, like image rotation, panning and zooming, occur on the hardware. Their HiSCAN series of scanner controller boards (ranging from $700-$3,000) supports higher-volume applications.
Kofax Engineers New IP Technology
Kofax (Irvine, CA 714-727-1733) is keeping up with processing's move to software with a new product line of software engines for document image processing. Their Adrenaline line ($400) supports several of the functions mentioned above -- without needing an additional piece of hardware. They're designed for use with applications developed with Kofax's visual programming toolkit, ImageControls 2.O.
Jobs like forms recognition and removal, barcode recognition, deskew and deshade used to be hard, if not impossible, without a board. Now, for applications that deal with relatively low volumes of documents, high-speed processing can be done sans board.
The software falls into three groups:
Retrieval Engine -- supports both display and print functions. Lets you build viewers or retrieval applications. Works with color or grayscale images.
Capture Engine -- similar to the current Kofax KF-920 entry-level engine but more powerful. Drives basic scan, display and print applications. Also supports color and grayscale scanning.
Image Processing Engine -- runs forms recognition, barcode recognition, deskew, line removal and other jobs that don't require high throughput.
Kofax hasn't abandoned their other IP products, either. Ascent Capture, a ready-to-run application, helps get paper into your imaging system. Perform batch scanning, OCR and indexing without taxing your host
Their KIPP accelerators support applications that push as many documents into an imaging system as possible without losing image quality.
Products range from the 42-page-per-minute KF-7300 ($1,800) to the 120-ppm KF-9275 ($3,600)
Shape Images Up and Ship 'em Out
SeaScan ($2,000) is a high-level production scanning application from Seaport (San Diego, CA 408-366-6400). One function SeaScan sports is the ability to scan documents in landscape mode and rotate them in real time to process them in portrait. Scanning in landscape means that less lines are captured, which in turn means less processing time.
Other features include: black border removal, deskew, register, barcode reading and text annotation at scan time -- without slowing down your scanner. The software works with Bell & Howell, Fujitsu, Photomatrix and BancTec (TDC) scanners.
The IP20 Image Processor Subsystems ($2,000-$8,000) from Seaport are a combination of software and hardware, which they refer to as a subsystem. The hardware is based on a 32-bit internal bus graphics processor engine.
Create apps with their toolkit that recognizes 600 barcodes a minute and compress up to 300 pages a minute.
Pick the model for your configuration:
Model IS 2114/IS 2124 is a low-cost option for scanners from Fujitsu, Photomatrix, Ricoh and Visionshape that use parallel video interfaces. Barcode reading is an optional function.
Models SS 3114 & SS 3126 are for scanners from Fujitsu, Ricoh and Visionshape that use the parallel video interface.
Model SS 3134 supports a serial video interface for single-sided scanners such as those from Bell & Howell and TDC.
Duplex scanners from Bell & Howell and TDC use Model SS 3146. This system requires only one IP20 Image Processor Subsystem and daughter card with 16 MB of RAM.
The Seaport IF-4100 scanner controller package ($1,000) implements real-time control functions, like setting parameters from page to page without stopping the scanner. Using the controller software, you can change the contrast and brightness to compensate for changes in paper stock.
You can change image resolution to accommodate documents with fine detail. Switch between single- and double-sided pages in the document stream.
These functions work with the hardware, which reads barcoded separator sheets interleaved into the document stream.
Xionics Juices Up Your Docs
Xionics (Burlington, MA 617-229-7000) provides a variety of image processing options in both hardware and software. Their boards run standalone or with Xionics software.
These cards are compatible with most imaging, fax and OCR software using either ISIS or TWAIN. The PowerLightning PC series ($900-$3,500) provides integrated support of mid-range and high-end scanners.
They scan up to 100 dpi letter-size or A4 images per minute at 200 dpi while compressing the images, displaying them and writing the files to disk. Their compression function reduces images on average from about 1 MB down to about 25 KB.
The PowerLightning family consists of four separate PC image accelerators.
PowerLightning/SCSI runs scanners in the 10-40 ppm range. PowerLightning/ SP runs simplex and duplex video interface scanners. PowerLightning/Pro is a high-performance accelerator for single-sided scanning video interface peripherals.
PowerLightning/ Dual is a duplex scanning board for a high-speed video interface. They are all supported by software apps created with the PowerTools for Windows imaging toolkit from Xionics.
The Lightning ($1,900) cards run low-end scanners up to 40 ppm. Lightning/Plus+ and Lightning/Scan, like PowerLightning, compress 1 megabyte images to a more manageable 25 kilobytes.
The cards also operate with Xionics' page separators for batch-scanning applications. Lightning cards work with Xionics' barcode and patch code recognition to support the automatic identification and document image indexing.
Image cleanup functions like deskew and noise removal work to improve the quality of scanned images and enhance character recognition. Lightning cards work with both shrinkwrapped imaging applications and the Xionics API. The cards are also supported by Xionics' ImageSoft C libraries for DOS and OS/2.
The Turbo PC scanner accelerator card ($5,000) is Xionics' most powerful PC document IP card. The Turbo product is designed to drive high-end scanners at up to 100 ppm. It connects to a number of single-sided and double-sided document image scanners and compresses to the same ratio as the Lightning and PowerLightning Boards.
A technology they call "pipelining" lets Turbo begin to compress and write an image to disk while the page is still being scanned. Decompress and display images on a monitor without slowing down either the scan or print speed.
Use the Turbo card with off-the-shelf imaging software applications.
It works with many production scanning systems. Turbo is supported by extensive application development tools for Windows, DOS, Unix and OS/2. Turbo works with shrinkwrapped apps. It also runs under Xionics' PowerTools for Windows application development toolkit and ImageSoft C libraries for DOS, OS/2 and Unix.
