OCR at INIS Branko Krznarić

Outline  What is OCR?  OCR Objectives  Principles  Techniques  Software INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 2

What is OCR? INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 3 (source: pcmag.com)

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)  OCR is the “conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text.” [1]  Make digitized images of printed documents searchable.  Font encoding issues. INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 4

OCR Objectives  Data entry from printed records.  OCR adds an extra value to your image.  OCR brings to life your digitized collection. We can “find the needle in the haystack” INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 5

OCR Objectives (contd.) Method of digitizing printed texts  Electronically edited  Searched  Stored more compactly  Displayed on-line  Machine processes INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 6

OCR Techniques  Pre-processing  De-skew  Despeckle  Binarization  Line removal  Layout analysis (zoning)  Post-processing (dictionary) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 7

Scanned vs. Vector Image INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 8

“Do not look at the trees (letters) try to see the forest (sentences)“ F0R 488UR1N6 7H3 L0N63V17Y 0F 1NF0RM4710N, P3RH4P8 7H3 M087 1MP0R74N7 R0L3 1N 7H3 0P3R4710N 0F 4 D16174L 4RCH1V3 18 M4N461N6 7H3 1D3N717Y, 1N736R17Y 4ND QU4L17Y 0F 7H3 4RCH1V LF RU873D 80URC3 0F 7H3 CUL7UR4L R3C0RD. INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 9

Verdana Font FOR ASSURING THE LONGEVITY OF INFORMATION, PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE OPERATION OF A DIGITAL ARCHIVE IS MANAGING THE IDENTITY, INTEGRITY AND QUALITY OF THE ARCHIVES ITSELF AS A TRUSTED SOURCE OF THE CULTURAL RECORD. INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 10

Brush Script MT (Windows Font) FOR ASSURING THE LONGEVITY OF INFORMATION, PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE OPERATION OF A DIGITAL ARCHIVE IS MANAGING THE IDENTITY, INTEGRITY AND QUALITY OF THE ARCHIVES ITSELF AS A TRUSTED SOURCE OF THE CULTURAL RECORD. INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 11

PCs ≠ Humans  OCR compares patterns and selects the closest match. It can be forced to a specific context, but requires customization.  People adapt to circumstances and can circumvent misspellings if context is clear. INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 12

True or false Usually, printed text is adequately sampled if each line is at least two pixels wide: INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 13

Zoom in INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 14

Zoom in INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 15

Results from OCR It is in this context that I… … and an additional protocol on the basis… INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 16

Chinese Raster Image (scanned) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 17

Chinese Vector Image (OCR) 滤器 INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 18

Arabic Raster Image (scanned) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 19

Arabic Vector Image (OCR) هذ ا وشملت INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 20

Japanese Raster Image (scanned) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 21

Japanese Vector Image (OCR) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 22

Font Encoding INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 23

Font Encoding (cont.) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 24

OCR Software  High degree of recognition accuracy  Reproducing formatted output  OCR Software at INIS:  Abbyy FineReader (multilingual OCR)  Adobe Acrobat  InftyReader INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 25

Abbyy FineReader (interface) INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 26

InftyReader - an OCR System for Math Documents INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 27

Reference [1] “Optical character recognition” recognition. Retrieved recognition INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 28

Thank you! INIS Training Seminar October 2015, Vienna, Austria 29