Patent ID: 8331740

Claim:
A method of processing image data of a zone in a response form that has a plurality of response bubbles in the zone, wherein image data of the zone has (i) at least one response bubble that is well-formed, and (ii) at least one response bubble that is not well-formed, the method comprising: (a) locating well-formed response bubbles in the zone from the image data of the zone; (b) comparing the locations of the well-formed response bubbles in the zone to corresponding locations in a form template that defines the zone and contains data regarding locations of all expected response bubbles in the zone; (c) determining from the comparison whether sufficient information exists to determine that the well-formed response bubbles constitute a specific part of the form template zone; (d) processing the well-formed response bubbles from the image data of the zone if sufficient information exists to determine that the well-formed response bubbles constitute a specific part of the form template zone, wherein the processing includes determining a marked status for each of the well-formed response bubbles; (e) using the locations of the well-formed response bubbles to infer the locations of the one or more response bubbles that are not well-formed if sufficient information exists to determine that the well-formed response bubbles constitute part of the form template zone; and (f) processing the not well-formed response bubbles from the image data of the zone, wherein the processing includes determining a marked status for each of the not well-formed response bubbles, wherein the steps (a)-(f) are performed by a processor.