Sequential extraction of strokes from a stroke based symbol apparatus and method

摘要

Stroke-based symbols such as conventional alpha-numerics are formed by individual strokes. Each stroke has intersections or node regions common to two or more strokes and main inter-node body regions unique to a single stroke. Strokes are a primary recognition cue to the human eye and for OCR techniques. The length and orientation of each stroke is determined and entered into a library of extracted strokes for analysis and matching. After selection each stroke is physically cut from the stroke based symbol to assist in selecting the next stroke. The body regions are cut first. The common node regions are temporarily protected to preserve the end nodes of the remaining strokes. Each node is cut during the extraction sequence of the last stroke common to that node. This sequential removal of strokes results in a progressively diminishing symbol residue and a progressively increasing library of extracted strokes.