The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 29, 2002
Filed:
Apr. 14, 1999
James R. Reda, Rochester, NY (US);
Jens H. Jorgensen, Rochester, NY (US);
Jeffrey P. Werlin, Rochester, NY (US);
Videk, Inc., Rochester, NY (US);
Abstract
An iterative application of an optical object recognition method, such as an OCR method, with enhancements and modifications yields improved speed and accuracy. In the exemplary embodiment, after an initial pass of the OCR method on a document image, unrecognized blobs are grouped into unknown regions to which the OCR method is applied via an analysis window. If the contents of the analysis window remain unrecognized at a starting position in a given unknown region, the window can be moved within the unknown region to provide more opportunities to recognize the unknown region's contents. Recognized characters are recorded, and the portions of the unknown regions in which they appeared are removed. This pass of the OCR method recognizes characters in blobs containing multiple characters. After all unknown regions have been analyzed, remaining unrecognized blobs are regrouped into new unknown regions according to particular relationships, such as spatial or spectral relationship, and predetermined criteria, such as relative distance or frequency distribution. The OCR method is then applied to the new unknown regions. This pass of the OCR method recognizes characters that have been split into multiple blobs.