Ncr Corporation

Dennis W Golem

Raymond L Higgins

Meera D Kulkarni

A system and method are disclosed for optical scanning and recognition of bar-coded characters such as CMC7 type fonts having a pattern of bars and intervals recorded on documents such as bank drafts and checks. The system includes an imaging device for forming a digitized matrix having rows and columns of a character to be recognized. A processor and an associated program are used for rotating the digitized image to facilitate processing in a word size used by the processor. A memory is used for storing templates of the characters to be recognized to enable the processor to perform template matching. The apparatus and method also include first, second, and third bit configurations used in identifying a character.

System and method for optical recognition of bar-coded characters using

An optical character recognition system is disclosed which is capable of recognizing out-of-specification characters and custom fonts, in addition to standard fonts such as E13B, OCRA, OCRB and Farington 7B type fonts recorded on documents such as bank drafts and checks. The standard fonts represent predefined characters, and the custom fonts and out-of-specification characters represent undefined characters. The system comprises an optical scanner, a microprocessor, a read-only-memory (ROM), a random-access-memory (RAM) with a stored program and predetermined template data, and a terminal with a keyboard and display unit. The scanner optically scans each document and produces a plurality of grey-scale pixel values which are stored in the RAM under control of the microprocessor. The microprocessor processes the stored pixel values, and effectively locates and segments each character on the document. In accordance with the predetermined template data, the microprocessor recognizes the segmented character if predefined, and rejects the segmented character if undefined. The rejected character is then displayed on the display unit for the user to see and identify. In response to identification provided (specified) by the user via the keyboard, the system develops a custom template or pattern representing (defining) the rejected character, and stores the custom template in memory for future use in recognizing the character.

OCR system for recognizing user-specified custom fonts in addition to

A system and method are disclosed for optical scanning and recognition of alphanumeric characters of different sizes and fonts such as E13B, OCRA, OCRB, and Farington 7B type fonts recorded on documents such as bank drafts and checks. The system comprises an optical scanner, a microprocessor, a read-only-memory (ROM), a random-access-memory (RAM, with a stored program) for storing data and a plurality of predetermined character-identification patterns (templates). Each template includes three configurations: an actual pixel patterns (bit configuration) or a character, a configuration representing significant portions of the character which remain the same and do not change despite changes in size of the character, and a configuration representing portions of the character which are given added weight in distinguishing between similar characters. The scanner optically scans each document and produces a plurality of gray-scale pixel values which are stored in the RAM under control of the microprocessor. The microprocessor processes the stored pixel values, and effectively locates and segments each character on the document. The microprocessor then converts the segmented-character pixel value to binary data, and selects, from the plurality of templates, the template that matches the binary data, the matching template serving to identify (recognize) the segmented character.

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Waterloo, Canada

Dennis W Golem