Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technique used to transform characters from images, scanned documents, photographs, and image-based PDFs into digital text. The technology makes it possible to convert characters into editable, searchable, and processable data instead of manual typing of information in a document.
OCR can be used in various scenarios, including digitization of historic records, invoices, and other forms of documents. Companies use it to eliminate repetitive tasks, improve searching capabilities of their data, and prepare documents for further processing.
What Is OCR?
If you’re asking yourself what is OCR, the answer is simple. Optical Character Recognition is a tool that makes it possible for a program to find text within an image and convert it to digital format.
Imagine that you have scanned an invoice and saved it as an image. In the absence of OCR, the file would only include the invoice as an image. With OCR, the computer would be able to find information like invoice number, customer, date, and total amount and then convert it to digital format.
OCR works with printed text and, depending on technology used and quality of your source, may even be able to read handwritten text.
OCR Definition Explication
OCR definition is quite clear – it is the recognition of characters in images and documents. This technology is aimed at connecting information in physical or visual form with digital structured data.
OCR technology is quite helpful in case an organization possesses huge volumes of paper documents, scanned documents, receipts, contracts, forms or only visual information (image PDFs). It is much easier for computer to work with text that is machine readable.
OCR Process: How it Works?
There are some typical stages of OCR process:
1. Image Acquisition
The very first step is providing the image of document or text by using a scanner, camera or a digital image. The quality of the provided source is quite influential in terms of the accuracy of the result.
2. Image Pre-processing
The computer performs a set of pre-processing operations on the received image. In particular, the computer may straighten the image, eliminate the noise, adjust the contrast or differentiate text and background.
3. Text Detection and Recognition
The OCR engine analyses the visual features of the document and recognizes letters, numbers or symbols in it. There are two main approaches in classic OCR technology: feature or pattern recognition. Modern OCR systems use machine learning algorithms.
4. Text Conversion
After the recognition stage is completed the computer converts recognized text into the machine readable form. It depends on the application whether the result will be saved as searchable text, editable document or other format.
5. Verification and Processing
The results of OCR technology need to be verified in case of high requirements concerning the precision of the information extracted. Bad quality scans, exotic fonts, complex layouts, handwriting or damage may influence the recognition negatively.
What Is Optical Recognition?
What is optical recognition? For OCR, optical recognition is the recognition of visual patterns representing letters, digits, or any other symbols and their conversion to digital data.
This technology does not perceive images in the way people do. Instead, it processes the visual features of the image and uses recognition techniques to identify which characters are shown there. Contemporary OCR technologies may use image processing, pattern recognition, and machine learning to recognize a wider variety of documents.
What Is an Optical Character Reader?
Sometimes people wonder what is an optical character reader in connection with OCR. An optical character reader is the name of a device or system intended to read characters from printed documents and convert them into digital form.
OCR and optical character readers are similar concepts, but OCR stands for the technology itself, while a reader might mean the system implementing it.
What Is OCR Software?
OCR software is an application or service which analyses images with embedded text and translates this information into digital text. The software may analyze scanned documents, photos, image only PDFs and other visual documents.
Common Questions about OCR
What does the acronym OCR mean?
OCR is an abbreviation of Optical Character Recognition. This technology helps in identification of text in images and translating them into digital machine-readable information.
Is OCR the same thing as data extraction?
No, although OCR may become one step of the whole data extraction process. The thing is that OCR deals with recognizing text from images or scanned documents, whereas data extraction involves collection of specific data from various sources.
Can OCR software recognize handwriting?
Some OCR related advanced technologies can do that, although handwritten text is more difficult to analyze than printed one. The special name for this is Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR).
Why is OCR useful for business?
With OCR technology businesses will be able to convert their paper and visual data into digital information which can be searched, edited and processed.
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