Patent ID: 8358853

Claim:
A method for automatically identifying a form comprising: providing a model database comprising a plurality of form models, each form model identifying relative positions of vertical and horizontal lines for a corresponding normalized form image, each normalized form image normalized for a same selected scale; and at a forms processing system executing on at least one processor: receiving an electronic form image of at least one document; extracting a frame of the electronic form image; aligning and vectorizing the frame to generate a model image; normalizing the model image for the same selected scale; determining relative positions of vertical and horizontal lines of the normalized model image; generating a model with the relative positions of vertical lines of the normalized model image and the relative positions of horizontal lines of the normalized model image; and comparing the relative positions of vertical and horizontal lines of the model to the relative positions of vertical and horizontal lines of the form models to identify a matching model, wherein the comparing the relative positions comprises: aligning the relative positions of vertical lines of the model with the relative positions of vertical lines of at least one form model; aligning the relative positions of horizontal lines of the model with the relative positions of horizontal lines of the at least one form model; determining a first Euclidean norm between the aligned relative positions of vertical lines of the model and the relative positions of vertical lines of the at least one form model; determining a second Euclidean norm between the aligned relative positions of horizontal lines of the model and the relative positions of horizontal lines of the at least one form model; and determining whether the at least one form model matches the model based on the first Euclidean norm and the second Euclidean norm.