METHOD AND DEVICE FOR DETECTING FIELDS CONTAINING MAIL ROUTING INFORMATION ON MAILED ITEMS

摘要

In the event that the address field cannot be clearly recognised by the OCR unit during the reading process, the position and outlines of the n largest typographic fields from the respective digital image are detected as a signature of the image, in order to reduce the video coding costs. A search is then carried out for a signature matching the current signature detected, in a database (11) in which the signatures of images of mailed items on which the position of the fields sought could not be clearly detected automatically and the position of the corresponding address fields sought, detected by video coding, are stored. If a match is found, the corresponding video-coded field position is transmitted to the OCR unit (105) and a new automatic reading process is initiated. If no match is found, the image is transmitted to the video coding device and the video-coded position of the address field is conveyed to the OCR unit (105) and stored in the database together with the signature of this image.