Patent ID: 7945101

Claim:
A method of performing optical character recognition operations on an image: providing image data of the image to a generative classification model; using a computer processor, performing generative image classification operations on the image data by the generative classification model; outputting a feature data set of the image data; providing the feature data set to a discriminative classification model; performing discriminative classification operations on the provided feature data set; and generating a classification of the image; wherein the feature data set is a feature vector defined as: ϕ c , i , j ⁡ ( I g ) = - I g ⁡ ( i , j ) - ϑ c ⁡ ( i , j ) ϑ c ⁡ ( i , j ) ⁢ ( 1 - ϑ c ⁡ ( i , j ) ) ( 3 ) where I g (i,j) is the pixel value at location (i,j) of the observed character image, and θ C (i,j) is an estimated value derived from the character template of character c at Location (i,j).