Method and apparatus for automatically extracting metadata from electronic documents using spatial rules

摘要

A spatial knowledge base approach for the automatic extraction of metadata 116 from electronic documents 100. The electronic document 100 is converted to a substantially format invariant data file 104 by an intermediate language conversion element 102. Spatial layout facts 108 are extracted and combined with spatial layout rules 114 from a knowledge engineer 112 in a spatial metadata-reasoning element 110 to provide the metadata 116. The invention is based on mimicking the visual and spatial knowledge that humans make use of when reading a document.