Simply flipping through a book may not seem like the best way to scan it, but a Japanese research team at Tokyo University has created a software that scans hundreds of pages within minutes.

Until now, scanning paper has been a tedious process in which pages one by one must be inserted into a flatbed scanner. But this new invention uses a high speed camera that takes 500 pictures per second to scan pages as they're flipped. The invention is able to scan a 200 to 250 page book in about 60 seconds using basic computer hardware available off shelf.

It takes a shot of the shape then it calculates the shape and uses those calculations to film the scanning. As it can film while understanding the underlying shape, it's very easy to then take the pages that are being scanned and save them as a normal flat copy.

While right now, it requires extra time to process the scanned images, the hope is to eventually make the technology faster and much smaller.

In the more distant future, once it becomes possible to put all of this processing on one chip, and then put that in an ipad or ipod, one could scan just using that chip. At that point, it becomes possible to scan something quickly to save for later reading.

Being able to scan books with an iphone maybe further off, but a commercial version of the large scale computer-based scanning system could be available in 2 or 3 years, while the flip scanner has the potential to take paper books into the digital age, it remains to be seen how publishers will feel about the new technology.

Natalie Armstrong, Reuters.