Bookscanner is a Greek SME whose business is the automatic digitisation of printed material with precision and reliability using state-of-the-art methods. Modern scanners can scan hundreds of pages per minute. However, they require physical alteration of the books to be copied. The holding edge must be cut and the books should be converted into packs of individual pages. This is a manual and destructive process. The new Bookscanner© product aims at making this physical alteration obsolete because its scanner can automatically turn pages and automate the whole process of scanning books without the need for manual intervention or damage. The new scanner is operational. However, one major improvement is planned which is addressed by this experiment: the removal of a page curling artifact that is introduced in images because of the physical properties of the books.
The only current method for the correction of page curling is a painstaking process that slows down the scanning process and requires expensive equipment. This experiment addresses the development of a new method using Cloud-based HPC which will be faster and decoupled from the physical scanning. This will enable the enhancement of the current Bookscanner© software to offer this unique “de-curling” feature. This experiment will demonstrate a Proof of Concept based on the SaaS model. This will readily demonstrate the potential of the enhanced software for commercialisation and use by third party vendors.
