Advanced Screen Capturing

Information

• Publication Type: Bachelor Thesis
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • Visual Information Foraging on the Desktop
• Date: 2016
• Date (Start): October 2015
• Date (End): July 2016
• Matrikelnummer: 1226287
• First Supervisor: Manuela Waldner

Abstract

Creating a free-form screen shot to get what is needed is not trivial task. Moving the mouse cursor around the desired region to indicate the boundary of the screen snippet often yields jagged outlines in the result image. Furthermore, it is not that easy to fully exclude unnecessary screen elements during the selection process. As a consequence, the created screen shot may also contain some small portions of surrounded image elements which are unwanted in the result image or some areas may be accidentally truncated. To overcome these limitations, Advanced Screen Capturing combines screen capture functionalities with image processing methods as an alternative way for creating free-form screen shots. The selection of the desired screen region is done by roughly selecting the needed image area. After extracting the highlighted screen region, a stroke mask is calculated for detecting the surrounded image elements by the drawn stroke. This stroke mask forms the basis for rejecting or accepting partly crossed image regions or truncating large ones. The image regions for accepting and rejection are detected as contours. By combining the stroke mask and the detected contours the segmentation mask is generated, where image regions are either fully included, fully rejected, or cut, depending on their amount of overlays with the stroke mask. Based on the segmentation mask, the original captured screen shot is segmented. In the end, the calculated result image contains all user defined relevant image information and adapted image boundaries. The introduced screen capture and contour-based segmentation algorithm works best for screen elements like text, charts, different kinds of shapes and a combination of these. Advanced Screen Capturing can be used as a library for integration purposes in other systems or as a stand alone desktop application. It was implemented by using C++ and Qt Framework and the OpenCV library.

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BibTeX

@bachelorsthesis{donabauer-2015-asc,
  title =      "Advanced Screen Capturing",
  author =     "Johanna Donabauer",
  year =       "2016",
  abstract =   "Creating a free-form screen shot to get what is needed is
               not trivial task. Moving the mouse cursor around the desired
               region to indicate the boundary of the screen snippet often
               yields jagged outlines in the result image. Furthermore, it
               is not that easy to fully exclude unnecessary screen
               elements during the selection process. As a consequence, the
               created screen shot may also contain some small portions of
               surrounded image elements which are unwanted in the result
               image or some areas may be accidentally truncated. To
               overcome these limitations, Advanced Screen Capturing
               combines screen capture functionalities with image
               processing methods as an alternative way for creating
               free-form screen shots. The selection of the desired screen
               region is done by roughly selecting the needed image area.
               After extracting the highlighted screen region, a stroke
               mask is calculated for detecting the surrounded image
               elements by the drawn stroke. This stroke mask forms the
               basis for rejecting or accepting partly crossed image
               regions or truncating large ones. The image regions for
               accepting and rejection are detected as contours. By
               combining the stroke mask and the detected contours the
               segmentation mask is generated, where image regions are
               either fully included, fully rejected, or cut, depending on
               their amount of overlays with the stroke mask. Based on the
               segmentation mask, the original captured screen shot is
               segmented. In the end, the calculated result image contains
               all user defined relevant image information and adapted
               image boundaries. The introduced screen capture and
               contour-based segmentation algorithm works best for screen
               elements like text, charts, different kinds of shapes and a
               combination of these. Advanced Screen Capturing can be used
               as a library for integration purposes in other systems or as
               a stand alone desktop application. It was implemented by
               using C++ and Qt Framework and the OpenCV library.",
  address =    "Favoritenstrasse 9-11/E193-02, A-1040 Vienna, Austria",
  school =     "Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms, Vienna
               University of Technology ",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2016/donabauer-2015-asc/",
}