APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR GLOBAL AND LOCAL FEATURE EXTRACTION IN DIGITAL IMAGES

摘要

An optical imaging device and method which utilizes global feature extraction and local feature extraction to locate, identify and decode optical codes found within a captured image is disclosed. A global feature extraction unit first processes low-resolution image data to locate regions of interest that potentially contain the code(s). If no regions of interest are identified by processing the low-resolution image data, the global feature extraction unit then processes higher-resolution image data to locate the regions of interest. Any regions of interest located by the global feature extraction unit are then transferred to a local feature extraction unit which identifies and decodes a code found within a region of interest. Both the global feature extraction unit and the local feature extraction unit can begin processing data representative of potions of the image being captured before all of the data representative of the complete image is transferred to the respective unit.