XEROX SCIENTISTS DEVELOP FIRST GENERIC IMAGE CATEGORISATION TECHNOLOGY

Innovative technology to revolutionise management of images

Under Embargo until 15th November 2004

Grenoble, France - November 15, 2004. Scientists at Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) have developed a system for the categorisation of generic digital images. The program, which effectively ‘recognises’ a photograph of a car, for example, and categorises it, will bring benefits to business applications such as document and content management systems, by allowing users to filter and search for images as well as words. In particular, this technology will bring advantages to customers who need to efficiently store and manage images and it will significantly extend web searching capabilities which are currently based upon text only.

Although there has been a phenomenal growth in the use of digital cameras and images, the use of technology to categorise image content is in its infancy, and is currently only used in applications such as face recognition in the security industry. However, in a breakthrough at XRCE, scientists have developed a generic technique for the identification of images, allowing the categorisation of multiple everyday image content types, such as buildings, animals, airplanes, books and faces. It is the first generic image categorization technology that is simultaneously robust, fast and simple to use.

“Images play a key role in most documents, but in the past document repositories have only been able to search for and categorise text,” says Christopher Dance, senior scientist, image processing, at Xerox Research Centre Europe. “We will be working with Xerox business groups to integrate this new system into Xerox’s document management offerings, making them pioneering products in this field, and providing Xerox customers with additional competitive advantage.”

This breakthrough is a result of fundamental research at XRCE, using Xerox scientists’ expertise in image processing, computer vision and machine learning. The technology works by ‘training’ a computer to map the key features of an object, known as patches, and to classify sets of these patches. This classification in effect assigns an image to a particular category or categories.

However, certain problems had to be overcome. For example, early versions of the system could confuse an image of a stack of tyres and an image of a car, as they both contain some of the same patches. In order to overcome this, the program examines key patches in the context of other areas of the picture. In this example therefore, a stack of tyres would not get confused with a car, because the machine would recognise that it missed other key patches, such as headlights or windows.

By being able to effectively recognise image content, a number of other services can subsequently be applied. For example, if the image recognized is that of a famous building, then the user could ask for more information about it to be automatically retrieved from the web.

Alongside developing this software for different applications, Xerox will continue to extend its categorizer to handle more visual categories and to incorporate difficult cases where the object of interest occupies only a small fraction of the field of view.

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About Xerox Research Centre Europe
Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) guides Xerox research activities in Europe. The centre coordinates research, engineering and the TeXnology Showroom, a customer showcase for Xerox research and a technology exchange forum. The centre is also in charge of developing connections within the wider European scientific community through collaborative projects and partnerships. XRCE creates innovative document technologies for the Xerox office and global solutions and services businesses.

The group focuses on services that help people access and share documents and knowledge, regardless of device, format, platform or language, from the desktop or at a distance. R&D competencies lie in content analysis (natural language), machine learning, document structures, image processing and work practices. XRCE research programs combine results from several research threads to transfer technology applications to the Xerox business groups. Current programs include Office Applications, Work Practice Services and Document Content & Structure.

About Xerox Europe
Xerox Europe, the European operations of Xerox Corporation, markets a comprehensive range of Xerox products, solutions and services, as well as associated supplies and software. Its offerings are focused on three main areas: offices from small to large, production print and graphic arts environments, and services that include consulting, systems design and management, and document outsourcing.

Xerox Europe also has manufacturing and logistics operations in Ireland, the UK and Holland and a research and development facility (Xerox Research Centre Europe) in Grenoble, France. For more information, visit www.xerox.com.

Xerox® is a trademark of Xerox Corporation. All non-Xerox brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

XEROX DOCUMENT IMAGING TECHNOLOGY CHANGES THE WAY PEOPLE COMMUNICATE

Under Embargo until 15th November 2004

Grenoble, France, 15th November 2004 – Scientists at Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) have developed document imaging technology for mobile phones that will evolve them into portable document scanners and can, ultimately, turn mobile phones into document service devices. The software has been built upon innovations in improving document imaging with cameras.

Potential business applications of the technology are numerous, but in summary it could revolutionise the roles of employees working remotely in any vertical sector by enabling individuals to capture information and immediately transmit it e.g. from trade events, presentations, forums, client meetings, screens, whiteboards and other situations.

“We saw the potential of mobile telephones as a vehicle for advanced imaging technology from the outset,” explains Chris Dance, senior scientist and image processing manager, XRCE. “However, we had to wait for mobile phone technology to catch up so that the cameras integrated on them were of a high enough resolution. It wasn’t until this year, with the advent of mega-pixel mobile camera phones, that we saw a potential route to market for our technology.”

Mobile document imaging software works through a four-step process. The first step is to capture the image which is immediately corrected for blurring in the second step. This is followed by conversion of the image to black and white, like a conventional printed image in step three. This involves the elimination of any shadows and reflections that it contains. For colour or handwritten text (e.g. on a typical whiteboard) colour saturation and white balance contrast techniques are applied. Finally, the image is compressed to up to a tenth of the size of a JPEG, the compression standard normally employed for mobile image transmission, which it makes possible to easily send and print the document image. The file can be sent by bluetooth, multimedia messaging (MMS) or facsimile. Once the image reaches a server or desktop PC where optical character recognition (OCR) can be applied, various types of services can be offered based upon the user needs.

“The ability to capture the image in a mobile environment, and then transmit that image whilst on-the-move is just the beginning,” continues Dance. “Once this is achieved, then in the future we will be able to apply other Xerox document technologies such as indexing, retrieval or summarisation. Ultimately we will be applying business-to-business document functions to the basic consumer ‘snapshot’ technology and, in doing so, will have changed the way in which people communicate.”

The technology is part of the licensing programme that Xerox has with its agent IPValue Management Inc. “We are currently engaged in a number of business discussions along the value chain for this technology,” explains Mathieu Chuat, Xerox’s European licensing director “from mobile phone manufacturers to vendors of other types of handheld devices, mobile carriers and application providers.”

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About XRCE
XRCE was founded in 1993 to guide Xerox research activities in Europe. The centre coordinates research, engineering and the TeXnology Showroom, a customer showcase for Xerox research and a technology exchange forum. The centre is also in charge of developing connections within the wider European scientific community through collaborative projects and partnerships.

XRCE creates innovative document technologies for the Xerox Office Group and Xerox Global Services. The group focuses on services that help people access and share documents and knowledge, regardless of device, format, platform, or language, from the desktop or at a distance. R&D competencies lie in content analysis (natural language), machine learning, document structures, image processing and work practices. XRCE research programs combine results from several research threads to transfer technology applications to the Xerox business groups. Current programs include Office Applications, Work Practice Services, and Document Content & Structure.

About Xerox Europe
Xerox Europe, the European operations of Xerox Corporation, markets a comprehensive range of Xerox products, solutions and services, as well as associated supplies and software. Its offerings are focused on three main areas: offices from small to large, production print and graphic arts environments, and services that include consulting, systems design and management, and document outsourcing.

Xerox Europe also has manufacturing and logistics operations in Ireland, the UK and Holland and a research and development facility (Xerox Research Centre Europe) in Grenoble, France. For more information, visit www.xerox.com.

Xerox® is a trademark of Xerox Corporation. All non-Xerox brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE): Media Backgrounder (Work Practice Research Area)

Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) is structured into four complementary research areas: content analysis; document structure; image processing; and work practice technology.

The work practice technology area develops a deep understanding of the use of technology in the work setting. This understanding is used to help develop new technologies and ways of working more productively with them. It is a multi-disciplined group, consisting of field workers and computer scientists and one where the research is based primarily upon ethnographic methods of study and analysis. Field studies cover numerous work domains, with the office being the primary focus of interest.

The research in this area is closely linked to the Xerox Global Services (XGS) business group and Xerox Office Group (XOG). The research provides a much greater understanding to both XGS and all Xerox’s business groups of the structure of its customers’ work which in turn feeds back into Xerox consultancy offerings which are better adapted to customer requirements and their work processes.

The observations in the workplace also enable XRCE to be more innovative with the appropriate technologies in order to help Xerox customers. It is through this observation of customers at work that problems are identified, and the need for such technologies as CopyFinder . For example, portable document camera (PDC) technology was created to solve a common issue in the law business. Lawyers often need to access sections of hard copy text that are too lengthy to re-type, but too short to warrant the time and resources involved in professional scanning and Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

The work practice research group applies a specific and unique methodology to understanding how its customers work. It firstly observes the details by ‘living the work’ themselves. This is known as ethnography, and is significantly different from attempting to analyse customers’ work by merely describing it from the outside.

Xerox is currently the only organisation to take ethnography to its next stage of evolution, namely analytical ethnography. In addition to observing and noting what each customer member of staff does, Xerox then analyses exactly the reasons behind each task, and how it fits in with the overall work processes.

Using the example of a print shop, a scheduler might be described as someone who merely organises what is printed and when. He or she ensures that no printing machines are left idle and, equally, that the print shop is not overrun with work. Using ethnography alone, they might be described as someone who processes certain jobs, completes certain tasks, and meets with certain people.

Making such ethnography analytical takes the process one step further by identifying how the scheduler is able to make the decisions they make. This means it takes into account all the other factors the scheduler assesses: knowledge of the different speeds of each printing machine; knowledge of the individual productivity of each member of personnel in the print shop; knowledge of the quirks of each customer; knowledge of how damp weather conditions might affect the paper; how a late delivery of stock might affect the schedule of print jobs and so on.

Related documentation:

• Work Practice consultancy Toolkit
• Portable Document Camera
• CopyFinder

Separate, individual fact sheets are available on all of these technologies and the business issues they solve (see below).

For more information, please refer to www.xrce.xerox.com or contact...