METHOD FOR ADAPTIVELY MASKING OFF A VIDEO WINDOW IN AN OVERSCANNED IMAGE

A method for extracting (masking off) a desired video window, such as that which forms a scanned image of a document or a portion thereof, from a overscanned image stored in a frame buffer is disclosed herein. Specifically, this method involves first determining horizontal pixel locations for left and right edges of the document for each of a plurality of scan lines located within said scanned image. Then, histograms of the left and right edge locations are fabricated. Once this has occurred, the positions of top and bottom edges of an escribing rectangle is found. The escribing rectangle is a rectangular area, located within the frame buffer, which includes the entire document. Now, with the top and bottom edge locations known, the inventive method locates the right and left edge locations of the escribing rectangle by suitably analyzing the histogram results. Next, memory address corresponding to the first pixel location in the escribing rectangle and the vertical and horizontal size of the rectangle are determined, using all the edge locations of the escribing rectangle, and then applied as input to addressing circuitry located within the frame buffer. Once this occurs, then all (or a portion of) the pixel values stored within the frame buffer and located on and within the escribing rectangle are successively accessed and routed to an output connection as being those pixel values that form the image, or a selected portion thereof, of the document.