Importance

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Abstract

A system and method for automatically processing machine printed forms which are filled out by hand are disclosed. The inventive system and method eliminate the use of a manual data entry step. Typically each form has one or more fields, each field having a machine printed field identifier such as the words 'name' or 'social security number' and the corresponding information which is filled in by hand. A scanner or other device forms a digital image of each form. An optical recognition engine searches the digital image of each form through use of an algorithm which can recognize machine printed but not handwritten characters to locate the fields in the digital image by locating the machine printed field identifiers. An offline handwritten character recognition algorithm is then utilized to recognize the handwritten characters in each individual field. Symbolic information corresponding to the recognized handwritten characters is then stored in a database in a memory.

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First Claim