

Features include the number of angled lines, crossed lines or curves in a character. Pattern recognition is used when the OCR program is fed examples of text in various fonts and formats to compare and recognize characters in the scanned document or image file.įeature detection occurs when the OCR applies rules regarding the features of a specific letter or number to recognize characters in the scanned document. Characters are then identified using one of two algorithms - pattern recognition or feature recognition. This stage typically involves targeting one character, word or block of text at a time. The dark areas are then processed to find alphabetic letters or numeric digits. The scanned-in image or bitmap is analyzed for light and dark areas, and the dark areas are identified as characters that need to be recognized, while light areas are identified as background.
Ocr scanner definition software#
Once all pages are copied, OCR software converts the document into a two-color or black-and-white version. Optical character recognition (OCR) uses a scanner to process the physical form of a document. How does optical character recognition work? For example, Google Cloud Vision OCR is used to scan and store documents on your smartphone. Today, OCR services are widely available to the public. Not only was this time-consuming, but it also came with inevitable inaccuracies and typing errors. Before OCR technology was available, the only option to digitally format documents was to manually retype the text. Advanced methods are used to automate complex document-processing workflows. Today’s solutions have the abilitiy to deliver near-to-perfect OCR accuracy. Since then, the technology has undergone several improvements. OCR technology became popular in the early 1990s while digitizing historical newspapers. In 1980, Kurzweil sold his company to Xerox, which was interested in further commercializing paper-to-computer text conversion. He decided that the best application of this technology would be a machine-learning device for the blind, so he created a reading machine that could read text aloud in a text-to-speech format. In 1974, Ray Kurzweil started Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc., whose omni-font optical character recognition (OCR) product could recognize text printed in virtually any font. The history of optical character recognition
Ocr scanner definition pdf#
The process of OCR is most commonly used to turn hard copy legal or historical documents into pdf documents so that users can edit, format and search the documents as if created with a word processor. OCR software can 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 - copies or reads text then, software typically handles the advanced processing. OCR systems use a combination of hardware and software to convert physical, printed documents into machine-readable text.
Ocr scanner definition manual#
It also eliminates the need for manual data entry. OCR software singles out letters on the image, puts them into words and then puts the words into sentences, thus enabling access to and editing of the original content. An OCR program extracts and repurposes data from scanned documents, camera images and image-only pdfs.

Optical character recognition (OCR) is sometimes referred to as text recognition. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology is an efficient business process that saves time, cost and other resources by utilizing automated data extraction and storage capabilities.
