16 May What is Machine Printed Character Recognition?
Machine printed character recognition is the most popular document capturing system at present. It is a process to perform electronic conversion of the text on a physical paper. The text on the document can be either machine print or handwritten.
Machine printed character recognition uses intelligent document recognition technology to read the pattern of the text on the physical paper and convert them accurately in digital format. It increases efficiency and work productivity like never before. It plays the major part in digitisation of companies and making workplaces more efficient.
Techniques Behind The Technology
It follows four steps to convert physical paper to digital format conversion of the text. 
Pre-Processing – The first step is pre-processing where the chances of reading a document successfully increase significantly. After the document is scanned and sent to software for data capture, the software first removes spots, aligns the document correctly, transforms it to grayscale and identifies paragraphs, lines, caption and likewise.
Character Recognition – It follows pattern matching technique where a scanned character is matched with a preloaded character. If the physical paper has typed text then chances are high for an exact match. But if it has handwritten text, it will use artificial intelligence algorithm to find a corresponding character. It is also called image correlation where the nearest matching character gets selected.
Post-Processing – In this stage, the digital version of the document is scanned to find certain words that will define the category where the document must be saved or listed. In post-processing, any error in words or grammar is notified so that the user can change them instantly. Even though any standard machine printed character recognition software is 90% accurate, with post-processing step, it becomes 100% accurate.
Optimisation – This is application oriented optimisation where the format of the file is decided and optimised to have less file size and have more features like frames, customised logo and other as per settings.
Applications Of Machine Printed Character Recognition
There are different types of machine printed character recognition based on its purpose. Traditional machine printed character recognition where one character is read at a time, machine printed word recognition where one word is read at a time, and intelligent character recognition where the handwritten text is interpreted accurately and transformed into digital format.
Machine print character recognition is used widely in data entry and data processing businesses for reading machine print documents such as bank statement, official documents and likewise. It is used in reading number plates so that all the information of a particular vehicle can appear instantly on the machine. You can scan a page or paragraph and search it among digital library which is highly useful for research work to spot the correct book to read and go forward with the research work.
Apart from that, companies are using it to digitise all paper works so that they can become paperless and more efficient. They also use it to preserve the physical paper texts in digital form for future reference. There are many such places where it has completely taken over for increasing work productivity like never before.
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