RECOGNITION OF MECHANICAL READING/CODING CHARACTERS

摘要

Machine encoded characters read from a document 10, such as a bank cheque, by an optical scanner 12 of a character recognition system 10 are stored in digitized form in a buffer 14. The stored digitized data is analyzed to find potential characters and to determine a reference location in respect of each potential character. The reference locations are stored and a first character recognition process is performed in order to determine if possible a machine encoded character for each reference location. The stored reference locations are analyzed in order to predict probable reference locations of additional potential characters, and a second recognition process is performed in order to determine if possible a machine encoded character for each predicted reference location. The method described reduces the number of characters that are rejected due to the presence of extraneous matter in the background of the characters being read.