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:
Jan. 14, 2003
Filed:
Dec. 09, 1999
Oren Kagan, Haifa, IL;
Aviad Zlotnick, Mitzpeh Netofah, IL;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
In an image processing system for processing filled in forms, a method and system are disclosed for removing the fixed part or template of a form without altering the variable part or information filled into the form. Whenever the variable part overlaps a fixed part of a filled in form a straightforward removal of the template creates gaps in the information characters making them unrecognizable by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software. This problem is overcome, according to the invention, by scanning a filled in form using any appropriate optical device capable of capturing images made of gray level pixels. First the fixed template pixels and the variable information pixels are separated from each other based on pixel position. Thereafter, the fixed and variable part populations of pixels are further analyzed so that gaps can be filled by moving pixels from the fixed part to the variable part on the basis of their gray levels thus, permitting to filling the gaps.