Scanformate

Scanformate is an open specification for the encoding of scanned documents, intended to couple high-resolution raster images with structured metadata and optional OCR results. It aims to provide a single container that preserves document layout, image fidelity, and searchable text for long-term access.

Structure: A Scanformate file consists of a header with version, document identifier, creation timestamp, and descriptive metadata; followed by a sequence of pages. Each page carries technical properties such as resolution, color space, and compression, plus an image data stream. In addition, a separate data section can store OCR results, layout tags, and accessibility markers.

Interoperability and use cases: The format is designed to interoperate with existing archival and document-management ecosystems. It can be converted to or exported from formats like PDF/A, TIFF, or PDF while retaining the embedded metadata. It supports multiple color profiles and tiling to manage large documents.

Development and adoption: Scanformate originated from a collaborative effort among researchers and software vendors in the digital-imaging community. Since its introduction, libraries and tools have been developed to read and write Scanformate files. Adoption remains specialized, with use in digitization workflows that require robust metadata and OCR integration.

See also: PDF/A, TIFF, OCR, document imaging.