Implementation of a Reading Assistive Computer System Using Image Processing Techniques

With the fast growing society of the elderly, various types of technologies and devices for providing the conveniences for the elderly are actively under development. Although many products for the person with low vision or presbyopia have been launched in the market, they mainly provide the simple magnification function. In this research, we introduce a implementation study for a multi-functional digital reading assistive computer system to provide the convenient functions for the person low vision or presbyopia to read a book in various environments. For this implementation purpose, various image processing techniques such as YCbCr transformation, sharpening, histogram analysis, adaptive binarization, edge extraction using masks, morphological operations, geometrical warping, area selection, selective zoom, left/right page selection, auto up-scroll, horizontalization, and linearization were applied for achieving the color image enhancement and user friendly functions.