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Overview

When Cardinal extracts figures and images, the Markdown output now contains numbered placeholders like: 
Here is a chart of quarterly revenue: [Figure 1]
These placeholders are not expanded in the Markdown itself. Instead, the corresponding metadata is provided separately in the image_metadata field of the API response. Example of image metadata returned by the API Example: Detected images and accompanying metadata

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How to Enable

To enable this feature, set imageMetadataDetect: true in your API request. By default, this parameter is set to false.

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How It Works

  • Markdown output: contains [Figure N] placeholders (e.g., [Figure 1], [Figure 2])
  • API response: contains an image_metadata array with entries that match those placeholders by ID
Each image_metadata entry includes:
  • figure_id — numeric ID that matches the Markdown placeholder
  • caption — short description or label for the figure
  • cropped_image_url — direct link to the cropped figure image
  • metadata — additional context (format, description, brand info, etc.)
  • bounding_box — both original and pixel coordinates of the figure
  • subfigure_count — number of subfigures (if any)
  • processing_times — timing breakdown of how long each step took
Note: By default, cropped_image_url contains temporary URLs to the extracted images. To prevent URL generation and keep images ephemeral, set the ephemeral: true flag in your API request.

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Example

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Markdown Output

Revenue grew steadily across the quarter: [figure 1]

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API Response

{
  "pages": [
    {
      "content": "Revenue grew steadily across the quarter: [figure 1]",
      "image_metadata": [
        {
          "figure_id": 1,
          "caption": "Nordnet",
          "cropped_image_url": "https://cardinal-ai-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/.../4413b49a_cropped.png?...",
          "metadata": "(1) The Nordnet logo.\n\n(2) It is there to identify the company that the presentation is about. The logo is associated with the brand \"Nordnet\".",
          "bounding_box": {
            "original_coordinates": {
              "min_x": 9.8557,
              "min_y": 1.2587,
              "max_x": 10.8182,
              "max_y": 1.4565
            },
            "pixel_coordinates": {
              "left": 2937,
              "top": 357,
              "right": 3266,
              "bottom": 457
            }
          },
          "subfigure_count": 1,
          "processing_times": {
            "uploads": 0.5005,
            "metadata": 2.6845,
            "caption": 2.5158,
            "total": 2.6851
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}