Patent ID: 7283669

Claim:
A method for refining character segmentation in an optical character recognition system receiving as input a plurality of candidate objects, comprising: merging each candidate object below a threshold character width with another candidate object at one or more merge lines to form a composite object; preclassifying the plurality of candidate objects such that each of the plurality of candidate objects is determined to be one of an identified single character, an identified composite object, and an unidentified composite object, such that a plurality of unidentified composite objects are outputted; determining one or more proposed split lines for each of the unidentified composite objects at which the composite object may be segmented; defining regions within each of the unidentified composite objects from the position of the merge and split lines; classifying the defined regions within each unidentified composite object to obtain an associated score for each region; defining a number of complete region sets for each unidentified composite object, each with an associated set ranking determined from the associated score of the regions comprising the set; and selecting the set having the highest ranking for each unidentified composite object.