PURPOSE: To provide a bar code reader which can surely and easily detect a bar code area to a form, etc., having an unfixed position of its bar code and can read the bar code at a high speed and with high accuracy.
CONSTITUTION: The images existing on a mail P having a bar code 10 are collected by a line sensor 11 and an image processing part 12 and stored in an image memory 13. An image feature extraction part 14 applies the differentiation processing to the images stored in the memory 13 in both vertical and horizontal directions and then applies the expansion processing to each differentiated image. Then, the degeneration processing is applied to the expanded images so that the black pixels are deleted one by one at the edge part of a bar code connection area image. A bar code area detection part 15 detects an image area of a prescribed size as a bar code area based on the degenerated images. A bar code identification part 17 identifies the bar code 10 based on the image included in the detected bar code area.
NARA KIYOYOSHI
NAKAMURA YOSHIKATSU
