Patent Document ID: 20100275111
Application ID: 12431528
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-readable medium encoded with a document processing system for processing at least one document image comprising a plurality of text rows and a plurality of characters, each text row having at least one character, the document processing system comprising a plurality of modules executable by at least one processor, the modules comprising an image labeling system configured to label the characters in the document image to determine a size of the characters and to determine at least one morphological structuring element based on the size of the characters; a character block creator configured to: create a plurality of character blocks from the characters in the document image by performing a morphological closing on the document image using the at least one structuring element, each text row having at least one character block; and label each character block to determine at least one spatial position of at least one alignment for each character block in each text row, the at least one alignment comprising at least one member of a group consisting of a left alignment and a right alignment, the left alignment comprising the at least one spatial position for a left side of each character block, the right alignment comprising the at least one spatial position for a right side of each character block; and a classification system configured to: determine a column for the at least one alignment of each character block in each text row, each text row having a physical structure defined by at least one column of the at least one alignment of the at least one character block in that text row; determine an initial subset of rows for each column having more than one character block aligned in that column in the text rows, each initial subset of rows comprising one or more text rows having the at least one alignment of the at least one character block in a selected column, each initial subset of rows having a set of columns comprising the selected column and any other columns in the one or more text rows; determine an optimum set for each initial subset of rows, each optimum set comprising a most representative set of columns selected from the set of columns of an initial subset of rows; determine a final subset of rows for each initial subset of rows, each final subset of rows comprising at least some of the one or more text rows of a corresponding initial subset of rows that have physical structures that are most similar to the most representative set of columns of a corresponding optimum set when compared to all physical structures of all of the one or more text rows in the corresponding initial subset of rows; determine a confidence factor for each final subset of rows, each confidence factor measuring a similarity of the physical structures of each one of the at least some text rows in one corresponding final subset of rows to each other one of the at least some text rows in the one corresponding final subset of rows; determine a best confidence factor for each particular text row in the document image, each particular text row having one or more confidence factors corresponding to one or more final subsets of rows in which the particular text row is an element; and create one or more classes of text rows, each class comprising one or more particular text rows having a same best confidence factor.