When a character is identified, it is converted into an ASCII code that can be used by computer systems to handle further manipulations. For example, the capital letter “A” may be stored as two diagonal lines that meet with a horizontal line across the middle. Features could include the number of angled lines, crossed lines or curves in a character for comparison.

Feature detection- OCR programs apply rules regarding the features of a specific letter or number to recognize characters in the scanned document.

Pattern recognition- OCR programs are fed examples of text in various fonts and formats which are then used to compare, and recognize, characters in the scanned document.Characters are then identified using one of two algorithms: OCR programs can vary in their techniques, but typically involve targeting one character, word or block of text at a time. The dark areas are then processed further to find alphabetic letters or numeric digits. The scanned-in image or bitmap is analyzed for light and dark areas, where the dark areas are identified as characters that need to be recognized and light areas are identified as background. Once all pages are copied, OCR software converts the document into a two-color, or black and white, version. The first step of OCR is using a scanner to process the physical form of a document. Once placed in this soft copy, users can edit, format and search the document as if it was created with a word processor. The process of OCR is most commonly used to turn While software typically handles the advanced processing.Ĭan also take advantage of artificial intelligence ( AI) to implement more advanced methods of intelligent character recognition (ICR), like identifying languages or styles of handwriting. Hardware, such as an optical scanner or specialized circuit board is used to copy or read OCR systems are made up of a combination of hardware and software that is used to convert physical documents into machine-readable text. OCR is sometimes also referred to as text recognition.

The basic process of OCR involves examining the text of a document and translating the characters into code that can be used for data processing. OCR (optical character recognition) is the use of technology to distinguish printed or handwritten text characters inside digital images of physical documents, such as a scanned paper document.

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