Rapid Capture: Reading through a Closed Book

Rapid Capture: Reading through a Closed Book

Author Name : Priyansh Soni

ABSTRACT  Book scanning is the process of converting physical books and magazines into digital media such as images, electronic text or electronic books by using an image scanner but the task is so tedious and time consuming and full of errors that human proofreaders usually check the output for errors. Imagine if scanning a book was as simple as ripping a CD. No unbinding, no page turning, no adjusting, just insert any book and get a digital copy. Ancient books that shouldn’t be handled by human hands can be unlocked without any disruption. And if the process becomes speedy enough, digitizing a book could become a lot less labour intensive. Some high-end scanning systems employ vacuum and air and static charges to turn pages while imaging is performed automatically, usually from a high resolution camera located over an adjustable v-shaped cradle. Images are then shuttled from the imaging device into various editing suites which can further process the images for an archival-quality file. But the current systems still are unable to read through a closed book with an adequate precision. Is it possible to create a revolution using new tools along with advances in computational imaging to get at pictures of things we could never see with optical technologies? Can we judge a book through its cover?