Method and apparatus for segmenting characters in an amount field on a financial document

摘要

A method and apparatus for segmenting character images in an optical recognition system wherein the character images represent an amount field. The segmentation is accomplished by identifying contiguous areas of black, representing connected portions or lines. The system attempts to recognize the contiguous areas, and if this is not successful either combines (50) an area of contiguous black with an adjacent (but separate) second contiguous black area or separates (64) the contiguous area into two regions and then tries to recognize them. A set of rules is provided which includes discarding fraction bars, material under the fraction bars (such as the numeral "100") and other techniques to isolate the image of the individual amount numerals and decimal from extraneous material to allow for recognition processing or operator entry of the amount into a memory associated with the document.