The OCR Tool Available to Anyone And Why Should They Use it?

• By Hassan Jamil
• 07-11-2022
• Technology

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition or Optical Character Reader. It is a technology that is used to get the editable text format by converting scanned images. In other words, OCR is a software that helps to convert physical documents or images into a searchable form. Nowadays different types of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools are commercially available.

For different types of applications it is a very useful and popular method. The Optical Character Recognition concept is straightforward but its application is quite complex due to some factors like font, font styles, or different methods used for letter formation. The whole process of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) involves a series of steps. The online OCR tool allows the conversion of all types of scanned documents and images into text.

History of OCR
The development of OCR’s began in the late 19th century and continues still today. In 1917, Ms. Jameson could read the print on record because she is blind. It’s a good start. In 1951, David Shepard introduced a Machine which is known as Gismo or Farrington machine that could recognize the alphabets in Latin language. In 1974, Kurzweil developed a CCD flatbed scanner for the first time to recognize optical characters.

In 1970’s, OCR technology scope was widened. In 1992, Newton MessagePad launched OCR technology for handwriting recognition. In 2006, Tesseract OCR software was taken by Google under its wing for accelerating the industry collaboration. In the 20th century, there is a need to develop the OCR system that can recognize any letter or number in any language whether that is wild or nicely printed.

How does it work?

OCR technology has three main elements:

1. Scanning
2. Recognition
3. Reading text

Firstly, Input image is scanned or captured by Camera. Input images may be of different formats i.e. GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, and multi-page PDF files. The quality of image is one of the important factors to recognize the quality characters of the document. Images can be processed independently.

Secondly, OCR systems have special techniques (preprocessing, Segmentation, Feature Extraction, classification, post processing) to handle the Input image. This preprocessing technique is used to improve the image quality by removing noises, background or watermarks.

Segmentation is another technique of the OCR system that is used to extract the lines by line segment, graphics from text by page segmentation, characters by character segmentation and words by word segmentation. After that, the Feature extraction stage is used to extract most useful information from the Input image. This information helps to recognize the characters in text.

Thirdly, Recognition is a most significant element in the OCR system. It is used to classify the characters, so that the information could be readable for both humans and machines. Recognition is important to detect and correct the grammatical mistakes and misspellings in the OCR output text that is obtained by completely scanning and processing the Input image.

At the end, the input image displays the reading text. There are many OCR tools. Each OCR tool has produced different results from the same image.

Benefits of OCR tools
OCR tools provides accuracy in required tasks
OCR tools stored information in an electronic form
From printed paper data record, OCR tools are widely used for data entry in business documents, e.g. business cards, invoices, bank statements, receipts, cheques
For passport recognition in airports
For automatic recognition of number plates, driver’s license and traffic signs
In many word processors, OCR tools is used to detect the mistake in spellings
Used to extract the business card information from contact list
Used to extract the key information of automatic insurance documents
Reading utility meters to automate billing
Drone-based object detection
Recognizing store labels & Bar-code scanning

Why People use it?
People use OCR tools for many tasks in different industries because it saves time and money. It speed-up the process and its accuracy is 98-99%.

Blind or visually impaired persons can use the OCR tools because these tools can magnify the computer screen and Provide information in a speech form.

In banking, OCR tools can be used by people to prevent fraud and increase security. OCR technology allows a real-time verification of the electronic money deposit cheques. Mobile banking app is an example where the cheque can be deposited digitally.

In hospitals, OCR tools can be used to record the patient's medical history (tests, treatmens, insurance payment, X-rays etc.) so that it is accessible for both patient and doctor.

People can use OCR tools to store their personal data by scanning which is helpful for them in traveling anywhere.

Travelers can use OCR technology for booking flights, hotels or rooms and manage their expenses. This technology is useful to enhance the customer experience.

OCR technology can also be used in Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) to find stolen cars, calculate fees for parking, invoice tools and for access control to safety zones.