Patent ID: 6697056
Filing Date: 2004-02-24
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
A method of automated identification of pre-printed forms, comprising the steps of:(a) manually entering on a pre-printed form one or more identifying marks received as digitized image data representing said identifying marks that is received by a computer and stored in a computer storage medium; (b) simultaneously receiving said manually entered identifying marks into a digitizer; (c) digitizing said received one or more identifying marks to yield one or more digitized identifying marks; (d) identifying said pre-printed form from said yielded digitized identifying marks by: (i) establishing a form identification zone that includes said identifying marks; (ii) determining which form corresponds to said form identification zone; (iii) storing a table that matches form identification zones to form IDs; (iv) reformatting said received digitized image data into a format to be processed by a recognition engine; (v) translating said reformatted digitized image data into recognized data by processing said reformatted image data with said recognition engine; (vi) retrieving recognized data for one or more form identification zones; (vii) searching said retrieved recognized data for a zone containing said mark; and (viii) identifying said form by matching said zone to a form ID; (e) displaying said digitized image data on a computer monitor to enable a user to manually identify the form on which said image data was written; and (f) displaying recognized image data on said user's computer monitor in a format convenient for auditing; (g) displaying digitized image data superimposed on an image of the identified form so as to present an on-screen image of said form and the images written thereon; and (h) auditing said recognized data by comparing said recognized data to said displayed digitized image data superimposed on an image of the identified form.