Category Archives: Glossary

Flatbed scanner

In contrast to planetary scanners, which are operating contactless with incident light, flatbed scanners work on the same principle as a copier: The original is placed on a pane of glass and light-sensitive sensors are guided under the pane of glass during scanning.

This method makes it possible to scan not only single pages and photos but also bulky documents such as books. However, in order to achieve a sharp image, the original usually has to lie flat on the glass plate. This can lead to irreparable damage to the book spine due to the high pressure load. In addition, the handling is very cumbersome as the flap has to be opened each time for the next scan; the book has to be taken out, the page turned again, etc. Likewise, this type of scanning does not allow a distortion-free and reproducible capturing of the original.

Some flatbed scanners also have a document feeder for single pages. Inexpensive flatbed scanners are therefore mainly used in office operations, where documents are mostly scanned in A4 up to A3 format.

High-priced flatbed scanners, especially in the large format area, also work with conservative LED lighting and high-resolution line sensor technology, which also enables digitization without pressure to a certain extent, but is clearly inferior to planetary scanners in terms of protection of the originals, handling and productivity.

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Document scanner

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Planetary scanner

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Document scanner

Document scanners are generally sheetfed scanners that are designed for productivity in order to scan the highest possible throughput of documents at high speed. They are essentially structured like a fax machine, but nowadays they work with additional functions such as grayscale, color recognition, feed control, etc.

The most obvious disadvantage of the sheetfed scanner is that it only processes single pages (front and back). Document scanners therefore score particularly well when it comes to the mass digitization of high-volume stacks of documents consisting of loose pages. However, bound originals cannot be digitized with this type of scanner. In addition, sheetfed scanners usually require the documents to be in good condition, since the originals are exposed to greater stress than with contactless scanning by planetary scanners operating with incident light. In addition, when feeding smooth documents, such as photos, there are unpleasant edge distortions.

With the SCAMIG series, book2net offers document scanners in the high-end area, which have unique features such as sensory feed and flow control, slow-down option, paper-friendly tape transport, gentle LED lighting and maximum color fidelity in accordance with the ISO 19264-1 standard. This makes it possible to digitize even sensitive templates and documents of various sizes, such as archive material, gently and efficiently at the same time.

With the combination of our document scanner SCAMIG 210 with various models of our book2net book scanners, we also offer our customers a uniquely variable and productive hybrid scanning system with shared user software.

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Planetary scanner

As well as the term planetary scanner, the [...]

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Hybrid scanning systems

Therefore, at book2net, we have developed versatile hybrid [...]

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EasyScan scanning software

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Hybrid scanning systems

Extensive digitization projects, in which a large number of different documents are to be scanned gently and efficiently at the same time, are often faced with the problem of finding the optimal scanning systems in terms of quality, workflow and cost efficiency. 

Therefore, at book2net, we have developed versatile hybrid scanning solutions for our customers. These are particularly suitable for the demanding requirements of retro-digitization projects in archives, libraries and digitization centers and enable the document-friendly, user-friendly and productive digitization of both bound and stapled templates as well as loose sheets.

Depending on the project requirements, we will put together a tailor-made package consisting of a book2net planetary book scanner (A1 / A2) for fragile, bound or stapled originals and an A3 SCAMIG document scanner for single sheets or loose stacks of sheets. In this way, the advantages of two scanning worlds are ideally combined: contactless, gentle incident-light digitization with the speed and high throughput of feeder scanners.

The scanning software of the book scanner serves as an interface for both scanners. This means that within the scan software you always receive all scans from both devices in the correct order and can export them together and feed them into further workflows. This eliminates time-consuming work steps such as merging individual scans from different devices and increases productivity significantly without compromising the quality and care in handling your documents.

Benefit from our hybrid scanning systems!

 

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Hybrid Scanning Systems – Federal Archives

Book2net hybrid scanning systems are supporting the Federal Archives in a major [...]

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Planetary scanner

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Book scanner

In contrast to document or passage scanners, book scanners are so-called overhead [...]

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Document scanner

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EasyScan scanning software

Our Easy Scan software is the user-friendly interface for controlling our scanning [...]

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Line sensor

Line sensors are light or radiation sensitive detectors (mostly semiconductor detectors), which consists of one or sometimes several rows of pixels (lines) to capture information. The counterpart to the line sensor is the area sensor, which has a rectangular arrangement (matrix) of pixels.

Line sensors are based on the original development for data storage from 1969 and have not changed significantly to this day. The light-sensitive sensors are very suitable for scanning documents in order to capture an image. The detector runs close to the original, scans the document line by line and combines the information from the individual scan lines to form an overall image. Sometimes only one line is used; sometimes a separate line is used for each color channel (red, green, blue).
This technology is still employed today in scanners, fax machines and copiers because it is very cheap and available in large quantities.

A major disadvantage of using this type of sensor in scanners is that the image capturing takes a comparatively long time due to the sequential scanning and that mechanical wear always takes place due to the movement of the components. This can lead to premature wear, especially with production scanners that have to digitize large quantities of documents in continuous operation.

In addition, the depth of field of line sensors is very small and covers only a few millimeters. Particularly in the case of books with a deep book fold or wavy pages that are not completely flat, this leads to blurring or even loss of information in the digitized material.

At book2net, we therefore only use image area sensors in our scanning systems.

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Bayer Matrix (Bayer Sensor)

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Image sensor / area sensor

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Image sensor / CMOS versus CCD

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Depth of field

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Image sensor / area sensor

In contrast to line sensors, image area sensors have a matrix with pixels, i.e. an x- and a y-axis. The area sensor offers a high dynamic range and a fill factor of almost 100%. These sensors are very suitable for high-resolution camera systems in industry and science, where a special focus is placed on maintenance-free and wear-free systems. In addition, due to their high quality, surface sensors are used in the areas of document digitization and capture, measurements and inspections, medicine and research as well as for 3D vision.

A considerable advantage of area sensors compared to line sensors is that the image sensor area can be exposed simultaneously and without delay, without the need to add up individual segments. The overall result is output immediately. This enables very quick and gentle digitization, as the templates are only exposed to external environmental influences, such as incidence of light, for a short time. The scanning time for high-quality area sensors is approx. 0.3 seconds, which leads to enormous productivity, especially for large digitization projects.

At book2net, we only use area sensors for all of our scanning systems, as they combine all the advantages for our customers and the areas of application required: high depth of field, short scanning and processing times, high image quality and the option of live video preview. The latter is particularly helpful when positioning the originals on the scanning surface. With the help of the preview image and our Live Control Professional software module, users receive a finished result proposal before the scan is actually triggered. If needed, frames can be set within the live image, the quality can be checked and the orientation selected. This avoids incorrect scans and further optimizes productivity.

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Image sensor / CMOS versus CCD

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Line sensor

Line sensors are light or radiation sensitive detectors (mostly semiconductor detectors), which consists of one or sometimes several [...]

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Depth of field

The depth of field indicates the range in which images are displayed sharply when photographing or scanning. For [...]

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Planetary scanner

As well as the term planetary scanner, the terms orbital scanner or book scanner are used to describe [...]

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OCR

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is a character recognition for documents. Using software or a software module, the text from scanned documents is recognized and saved together with the image file. This makes it possible to create searchable documents. The output is directly in PDF, Word or optionally in other file formats.

The recognition process can be triggered after the actual scanning process (post-processing) or can be performed directly from the scanning application (on-the-fly) using our “Easy Scan Professional OCR” software module. When using OCR, it is generally advisable to make the scans bitonal, i.e. in black and white, in order to achieve a higher success rate.

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TWAIN

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Operating systems – Windows

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Depth of field

The depth of field indicates the range in which images are displayed sharply when photographing or scanning. For example, if you work with a shallow depth of field and focus on an object that is, say, 30 cm away from the lens, everything closer (15 cm) or farther away (35 cm) will appear out of focus.

When digitizing, however, one works mainly with flat, two-dimensional originals, for which a shallow depth of field is supposedly required. However, if you want to digitize three-dimensional objects, such as books with a deep book fold or seal letters with a structure, it quickly becomes clear why a high depth of field is necessary: here, all areas should be displayed sharply and legibly so that no information is lost.

The further away the lens is from an object, the greater the depth of field. In macro photography, where the distance between the optics and the subject can be less than 5 cm, it is self-explanatory that the depth of field decreases accordingly or is barely present.

Thanks to the special optics and the area sensor used, our systems are able to provide a depth of field of 8-15 cm, depending on the format.

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Focus level

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Margin area

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Book fold optimization

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Lens

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Image sensor / CMOS versus CCD

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Focus

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Autofocus

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Motorized focus

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Bayer Matrix (Bayer Sensor)

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Margin area

When digitizing with planetary scanners, the margin area of the documents is of crucial importance.

Experience has shown that the sharpness of scans decreases towards the edge. Special lenses are therefore needed to ensure that documents and originals are uniformly sharp across the entire imaging area, i.e. not only in the center but also in the critical edge areas.In addition, distortions or color fringes sometimes occur in the peripheral areas.

To prevent this, all our systems are equipped with apochromatic corrected industrial optics designed specifically for digitization.

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Lens

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Apochromat / apochromatic

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Focus

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Focus level

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Planetary scanner

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Lens

Every camera needs a lens to project the object or the image to be captured onto the sensor. Lenses come in a variety of designs for a wide range of applications: Macro, back-magnification, telephoto, wide-angle, zoom or tilt-shift lens. Basically, lenses can be adjusted in two ways: focal length and aperture. The focal length determines how close or how far away objects must be to be in focus. This is also referred to as focusing. The aperture controls how much light falls through the optics onto the sensor. If the aperture is wide open, a lot of light falls on the sensor and the depth of field is basically shallow. If you close the aperture, the image becomes darker, but the depth of field increases.

In our systems we use a special lens, which was designed for the digitization of documents and books. Here we pay a lot of attention to a distortion-free image in order to avoid deformations of the documents. This ensures that the documents are also scanned and displayed at right angles and true to scale. In addition, the lens we use differs from other commercially available lenses in that it is apochromatic corrected and has extremely high sharpness even in the peripheral areas. This is because unlike in photography, when digitizing, the important image information is not only in the center of the image, but also, or especially, in the peripheral areas.

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Focus

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Depth of field

The depth of field indicates the range in which images are [...]

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Margin area

When digitizing with reflected light scanners, the margin area of the [...]

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Autofocus

Autofocus is a common feature when taking photos with consumer cameras [...]

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Motorized focus

Our systems work with a fixed focal length as standard. This [...]

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Image sensor / CMOS versus CCD

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Bayer Matrix (Bayer Sensor)

The Bayer matrix is the spatial arrangement of the red, green [...]

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Prequalification

Prequalification enables potential suppliers (bidders) to demonstrate in advance their expertise and capability as defined in the procurement and contracting regulations, irrespective of a specific invitation to tender. Prequalification saves companies the effort of having to submit individual certificates (e.g. declarations of turnover, entries in the professional and commercial registers or extracts from criminal records) that are regularly required in award procedures. Instead, public contracting authorities can recognize the collective certificates (prequalification) deposited by prequalification bodies instead of the individual certificates.

Advantages for contracting authorities:

The certificates of suitability are always up to date at the prequalification bodies. Suitability tests of companies for award procedures are easier and faster to perform.

The use of a centralized service increases legal certainty compared to the provision of a wide range of individual certificates.

With the certificate number 06 006 TZGL59 the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Wiesbaden certifies that the company MICROBOX GmbH, Hohe Straße 4-6, 61231 Bad Nauheim, is registered in the official register (www.amtliches-verzeichnis.ihk.de) as a suitable company for public contracts. As a prerequisite for registration, the company was prequalified by the Auftragsberatungsstelle Hessen e.V. We will be happy to provide you with the access code to the HPQR certificate upon request.