Patent ID: 8571262

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for searching for elements in an electronic image of a form, the method comprising: detecting, via instructions operating on a computing device, objects in the electronic image of the form; allocating a position for each object in the electronic image; selecting text objects; recognizing text within the text objects; and searching for elements in the electronic image of the form based on a structural description of the form, wherein said searching includes: selecting an element in the structural description for the searching operation; determining an algorithm for determining search constraints for the searching operation; determining search constraints using the determined algorithm; and searching for the element using one or more of the search constraints, wherein searching for the element includes: searching using a spatial characteristic of a search area for the element; searching using a parametric characteristic of the element; searching using an absolute or relative spatial characteristic of the element; and searching using a result of said text recognition within the text objects; identifying variants of the element; estimating, for the obtained variants of the element, a degree of correspondence of the respective variants to the element description.