Patent ID: 7474780

Claim:
A method for identifying an unknown MICR character on a document, comprising the steps of: providing a document within an envelope, wherein the document has an unknown MICR character printed with magnetic ink; extracting the document from the envelope; imparting a magnetic charge onto the magnetic ink to magnetize the unknown character; scanning the unknown character with a magnetic read head to obtain a set of data indicative of the unknown character; providing a plurality of predetermined data sets wherein each data set corresponds to a particular MICR character; determining a correlation value of the similarity between each of the predetermined data sets and the data set for the unknown character using cross correlation; determining a normalization value for the cross correlation of each data set and the data set of the unknown character and dividing the correlation value by the normalization value; identifying the maximum correlation value; and identifying the unknown character as the MICR character corresponding to the data set having the maximum correlation value.