Patent ID: 7072514

Claim:
A method of categorizing an image as handwritten, machine-printed, and unknown, comprising the steps of: (a) receiving an image; (b) identifying connected components within the image; (c) enclosing each connected component within a bounding box; (d) computing a height and a width of each bounding box; (e) computing a sum and maximum horizontal run for each connected component, where the sum is the sum of all pixels in the corresponding connected component, and where the maximum horizontal run is the longest consecutive number of horizontal pixels in the corresponding connected component; (f) identifying connected components that are suspected of being characters; (g) if the number of suspected characters is less than or equal to a first user-definable number then categorizing the image as unknown and stopping, otherwise, proceeding to the next step; (h) if the number of suspected characters is greater than the first user-definable number then comparing the suspected characters to determine if matches exist, where a match exists between a pair of suspected characters if the suspected characters in the pair have the same height and width, if each suspected character in the pair has a height that is less than 4 times its width, and if each suspected character in the pair has a width that is less than 4 times its height; and (i) computing a score based on the suspected characters and the number of matches and categorizing the image into one of a group of categories consisting of handwritten, machine-printed, and unknown.