SCANNER

Index

Introduction History Anatomy of scanner Scanning Process Image Transfer Types Hardware Interface Software Interface Features Future Reffrences

Introduction
A scanner is a hardware device used to input text and or images into the computer.

In computing, a scanner is a device that analyzes images, printed text, or handwriting, or an object (such as an ornament) and converts it to a digital image.

History

The first image scanner ever developed was a drum scanner. It was built in 1957 at the US National Bureau of Standards by a team led by Russell Kirsch. The first image ever scanned on this machine was a 5 cm square photograph of Kirsch's thenthree-month-old son, Walden. The black and white image had a resolution of 176 pixels on a side.

Anatomy of a scanner

Parts of a typical flatbed scanner include: Charge-coupled device (CCD) array Mirrors Scan head Glass plate Lamp Lens Cover Filters Stepper motor Stabilizer bar Belt Power supply Interface port(s) Control circuitry

The scanning process

The document is placed on the glass plate and the cover is closed. A lamp is used to illuminate the document. The entire mechanism (mirrors, lens, filter and CCD array) make up the scan head. The scan head is moved slowly across the document by a belt that is attached to a stepper motor. The scan head is attached to a stabilizer bar to ensure that there is no wobble or deviation in the pass. Pass means that the scan head has completed a single complete scan of the document. The image of the document is reflected by an angled mirror to another mirror. Each mirror is slightly curved to focus the image it reflects onto a smaller surface. The last mirror reflects the image onto a lens. The lens focuses the image through a filter on the CCD array.

PROCESS

Image Transfer
Scanning the document is only one part of the process. For the scanned image to be useful, it must be transferred to your computer. There are three common connections used by scanners: Parallel - Connecting through the parallel port is the slowest transfer method available. Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) SCSI requires a special SCSI connection. Most SCSI scanners include a dedicated SCSI card to insert into your computer and connect the scanner to, but you can use a standard SCSI controller instead. Universal Serial Bus (USB) USB scanners combine good speed, ease of use and affordability in a single package. FireWire - Usually found on higher-end scanners,FireWire connections are faster than USB and SCSI. FireWire is ideal for scanning high-resolution images.

A scanner may have more than one way of connecting to your computer.

Type

Drum Scanner Flatbed Scanner Hand Scanner

Drum Scanner

Drum scanners capture image information with photomultiplier tubes (PMT) rather than the charged coupled device (CCD) arrays found in flatbed scanners and inexpensive film scanners. it passes the object being scanned in front of precision optics that deliver image information to the PMTs.

The drum scanner gets its name from the large glass drum on which the original artwork is mounted for scanning, One of the unique features of drum scanners is the ability to control sample area and aperture size independently.
drum scanners are capable of scanning both reflective and transmissive artwork..

Flatbed Scanner
A flatbed scanner is usually composed of a glass pane (or platen), under which there is a bright light (often xenon or cold cathode fluorescent) which illuminates the pane, and a moving optical array, whether CCD or CIS. Color scanners typically contain three rows (arrays) of sensors with red, green, and blue filters.

Handheld Scanner
Hand scanners are manual devices which are dragged across the surface of the image to be scanned. Scanning documents in this manner requires a steady hand, as an uneven scanning rate would produce distorted images. A typical hand scanner also had a small window through which the document being scanned could be viewed.

Software Interface

On your computer, you need software, called a driver, that knows how to communicate with the scanner. Most scanners speak a common language, TWAIN. The TWAIN driver acts as an interpreter between any application that supports the TWAIN standard and the scanner. This means that the application does not need to know the specific details of the scanner in order to access it directly. For example, you can choose to acquire an image from the scanner from within Adobe Photoshop because Photoshop supports the TWAIN standard.

Hardware interfaces

Scanners have used just about every interface available on the PC. The first PC-based scanners used either the printer port or a custom port on an ISA card. With printer-port scanners, the printer was often daisy-chained through the scanner. While this method was slow and clumsy (since printer ports were never designed to support this kind of chaining of devices), it was almost universally effective: just about every computer out there had a printer port, even laptops ."

Features

Resolution Interpolation Bit depth Infrared cleaning

Resolution
The more resolution a scanner has, the better. Resolution also breaks down a couple of different ways: Hardware Resolution Interpolated Resolution Hardware resolution is the actual number of pixels the scanner's CCD can provide; interpolated resolution is the number of pixels returned from the scanner to the PC after processing. For instance, a 2400 DPI scanner might really be a 600 DPI scanner that uses algorithms to interpolate the picture from 600 DPI to 2400 DPI.

Interpolation
Interpolation is a process that the scanning software uses to increase the perceived resolution of an image. It does this by creating extra pixels in between the ones actually scanned by the CCD array. These extra pixels are an average of the adjacent pixels. For example, if the hardware resolution is 300x300 and the interpolated resolution is 600x300, then the software is adding a pixel between every one scanned by a CCD sensor in each row.

Bit Depth
Another term used when talking about scanners is bit depth, also called color depth. This simply refers to the number of colors that the scanner is capable of reproducing. Each pixel requires 24 bits to create standard true color and virtually all scanners on the market support this.

Infrared Cleaning
Infrared cleaning is a technique used to remove dust and scratches from film and most modern scanners incorporate this feature. It works by scanning the film with infrared light. From this, it is possible to detect dust and scratches that cut off the infrared light and they can then be automatically removed based on their position, size, shape and surroundings.

Scanner Music
Flatbed scanners are capable of synthesising simple musical scores due to the variable speed (and tone) of their stepper motors. This property can be applied for hardware diagnostics, for example the HP Scanjet 5 plays Ode to Joy if powered on with SCSI ID set to zero. Windows and Linux based software is available for several brands and types of flatbad scanners to play MIDI files for fun purposes.

Future
Much of the work being done with organic LEDs and super-flat components hints at a possible scanner of the future. Imagine a sheet not much thicker than a piece of paper, which could be placed between the pages of a book, powered through a USB connector. One could scan delicate or bound originals without having to disassemble the item or force it flat on a scanner bed. A scanner could be rolled up in a document tube and taken anywhere.

Thank You