Optical Character Recognition is a widespread technology that is used to convert images that contain written texts. Such as scanned or printed documents, into machine-readable texts. Before it was available, the only option to digitally store paper documents was to manually re-type the entire text. However, OCR technology has successfully automated all such processes for our convenience-OCR Scanning Services
How OCR Screening works
Step 1: Pre-Processing
For OCR scanning, images have to be preprocessed in the following ways:
De-skew and Despeckle
This technique involves the proper alignment of the documents, removing any spots, and smoothening crumpled/folded edges. The title of the document can be horizontally or vertically as well
Binarisation
This converts colored images to binary images, i.e in grey-scale, as most OCR algorithms work on binary images
Layout Analysis and Line Removal
However, this process involves recognition of texts and data by identifying columns, paragraphs, and distinct blocks and filtering out non-glyph boxes and lines
Script Recognition
To improve the results in the case of multilingual documents, script recognition identifies and classifies the scripts including fonts, styles, and languages of the document
Character Isolation
This process, also known as segmentation, assists in dividing an image document into different characters. In the case of a text document, the OCR, segmentation is applied at the character-level.
Step 2: Character Recognition
Character recognition works in the following two ways:
Pattern Recognition
Secondly, the technique works best for typewritten documents in the same font and involves using the “Matrix Matching” algorithm, which makes a comparison between the image to a stored glyph, pixel-by-pixel.
Feature Extraction
This process involves using the “k-nearest neighbor” algorithm and helps in the identification of individual components of a particular character (such as the alphabet A) by converting it into “features” e.g. Lines, line intersections, closed loops, line directions, etc. These features are then compared with the abstract vector-like representation of the character (such as 2 horizontal and 1 vertical line in the alphabet A)
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Step 3: Automated Form Population
This is an automated data entry process. The data from pre-processing and character recognition steps are populated in the respective fields of the verification form which saves the time of the end-user.
Traditional OCR VS AI-Powered OCR screening services
The growth of Artificial Intelligence has increased our expectation of what automation can achieve. Traditionally, document processing involved manual data entry which was a time-consuming process that businesses were looking to replace. Today, with the help of automated OCR solutions, data is converted from scanned and printed documents to machine-coded texts effectively and accurately, particularly in the case of financial and identity documents verification.
Industries Using OCR Services
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- Banking and Related Industries: Leaving behind paper-based manual extraction of data, investment banks, insurance firms, brokerage firms, etc are making use of OCR technology for the verification of customer records, checks, and monthly statements.
- Travel and Tourism Industry: After that, OCR screening is being used for various purposes at airports and on accommodation booking applications. Some processes it has made faster include passport scans, booking for flights, check-in at hotels, travel expense management, etc.
- Government: OCR technology is highly used in elections for registering voters and making the process more convenient and efficient for them and the government. So thanks to OCR scanning services, the process of extracting full names, date of birth, etc. is now automated
- Healthcare: By using OCR services, medical providers can access the medical history of patients in just one click. So hospital admins also make use of OCR software to stay up-to-date with logistics and consumables.
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What benefits does OCR (Optical Character Recognition) bring to you
Optical Character Recognition technology adds value for businesses in the following ways:
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- It does not involve the installation of any additional hardware. you can install on all operating systems including Android, IOS, and windows
- similarly, images can be easily captured via mobile camera or webcam
- Optical character recognition online saves time, cost, and manual resources required for data extraction
- Results have an accuracy rate of 98-99 percent
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