Patent ID: 6999635
Filing Date: 2006-02-14
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
1. A method of reducing background noise during optical character recognition in which a scan band of image data is optically read from a document and the image data is passed to a recognition system, the image data including data at a plurality of character positions that form a sequence, the method comprising: conducting a first recognition pass over the image data at the sequence of character positions to frame and recognize a first set of characters while a second set of characters remains unrecognized; tracking character skew based on the first recognition pass, the tracked character skew being indicative of vertical drifting of framed characters over the sequence of character positions; modifying the image data to remove background noise based on the tracked character skew; and conducting a second recognition pass over the modified image data at the sequence of character positions to frame and recognize the second set of characters.