US Patent 6853755 Method and apparatus for adaptive compression of scanned documents

A method of compressing a document, includes preparing an encoded representation of a document by scanning the document to provide a scanner output; classifying the scanner output as belonging to a class of document taken from the document classes consisting of smooth, text, graphics and image; and adaptively compressing the scanner output as a function of the class of the document. A compression apparatus for compressing scanned data, includes a scanner for scanning a document and generating a scanner output; a block-based classifier for classifying the scanner output as belonging to a class of documents taken from the document classes consisting of smooth, text, graphics and image; an adaptive compressor for compressing the scanner output according to a compression mode as a function of the class of document; a storage mechanism for storing compressed scanner output and compression mode information; and a decompressor for decompressing compressed scanner output in accordance with the compression mode information.