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From: 00lhramer@bsu-ucs.uucp (Leslie Ramer)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Optical Character Recognition, how? (Curious)
Message-ID: <50761@bsu-ucs.uucp>
Date: 2 Dec 90 20:33:45 GMT
Organization: Ball State University, Muncie, In - Univ. Computing Svc's
Lines: 64

I was curious as to the methods of ASCII scanners (OCR's) for
translating BITMAP code into ASCII codes.  I've generated some
thoughts according to the methodology (that can be used) to
accomplish this.

The problem, according to my reasoning, follows a kind of
flow.

1.  Some form of logical reduction needs to be made to make
    the problem more tractable.

2.  Some form of mathematical reduction forming a list of
    statements, or data needs be done.

3.  A set of rules or a functional relationship of some kind
    must exist to make sense of the data.

These are elements of the "HOW" of my solution method.
Here's the application I would imagine the OCR would use.

1 -> A bitmapped image is bound to have hundreds, if not
thousands of dots.  It is really quite obvious that all these
dots aren't necessary for the recognition of the characters.
Would/is a pattern reduction type of method that would lead toward
a successful reduction of the problem?

2 -> Once we have the image reduced a little, some mathematics
need to reduce the image to another data form.  I would imagine
that a bunch of vectors need to be generated that best approximate
the image.  Once this has been accomplished, the vector mathematics
that are available could be used to recognize the characters in
virtually any rotation.

3 ->  The mathematical data created in 2 needs to be interpreted.
Some reference vectors (dot products, lengths, approximate locations,
etc...) should be matched in some sort of "FUNCTION" table, and the
approximate ascii characters output.  Maybe even a probability that
each character is the correct one, if this method doesn't work.

This method is very undeveloped in my mind.  I realize that there are
other problems in this problem that pose further problems.  ie. what is
difference between a lowercase L and the number 1?  Either context or
a direct difference needs to be noted.

Again, this is an interesting problem to me.  I'm interested in it
for the fact that it's interesting that a machine can read as well
as, if not faster than, I do.  (The blind reader in the library
reads (through a speech synth) at a rate of up to 425 wpm.  I don't
normally read anywhere near that.)

It would seem that there are a great number of operations that would need
to be done to recognize the characters no matter what typeface is used.
I like to see things get done, and get done fast.  (I'm very different
from the machines in that sense, I don't always think fast.)

:-)

Thanks in advance,

====         "No one runs so fast as he that is chased."
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