Patent ID: 8610966

Claim:
A system for automatically extracting information from an identity document, the system comprising: a) at least one light source for illuminating the identity document; b) at least one digital camera including a lens and a two-dimensional sensor array configured to acquire at least one two-dimensional image frame of the identity document; and c) a processor for processing said at least one two-dimensional image frame, said processor being in communication flow with a document-template database, said processor is configured to apply an optical character recognition (OCR) routine for extracting textual information from said at least one two-dimensional image frame of the identity document in the form of alphanumerical information, wherein said OCR routine includes: i) determining a type of the identity document; ii) fetching a matching template from said document-template database, wherein said matching template corresponds to said determined type of the identity document, and wherein said template includes one or more data fields; iii) overlaying said at least one two-dimensional image frame with said matching template, wherein each data field demarcates a respective data region of said overlaid image frame, to thereby obtain a geometrical correlation between said at least one two-dimensional image frame and said template; iv) selecting data regions, wherein said textual information is extracted from selected data regions; v) determining boundaries between text and background based on a minimum contrast between a character and other colored data on said image frame of the identity document, approximately within the boundaries of said selected data regions; vi) extracting black and white glyphs using at least a portion of said determined boundaries; and vii) applying said OCR routine on said black and white glyphs, thereby recognizing symbols and characters.