Patent ID: 6850645

Claim:
A pattern recognizing apparatus, comprising: a character extractor that extracts a character from an input image; a non-character extractor that extracts a non-character from an input image; a character recognizer that recognizes a character; a non-character recognizer that recognizes a non-character; and an environment recognizer that instructs the character recognizer to perform a recognition process when the character extractor extracts a character, and that instructs the non-character recognizer to perform a recognition process when the non-character recognizer extracts a non-character; wherein the environment recognizer computes a reliability indicating certainty about a recognition result obtained from the character recognizer when the character extractor extracts a character, and instructs the non-character recognizer to perform a recognition process with a character extracted by the character extractor regarded as a non-character when the reliability about the recognition result obtained from the character recognizer is smaller than a predetermined value.