Method for adaptively encoding positions of textual objects in a document

A system for adaptively discretizing a position of a textual object in a document, the system comprising:

• a computing device having a processor coupled to a memory, the processor configured to:
• receive an image of the document;
• automatically determine an absolute position of the textual object in the image of the scanned document based upon a pixel resolution of the image, the absolute position comprising pixel-based x-y coordinates defining a bounding box around the textual object;
• normalize the absolute position based upon the pixel resolution of the image to generate a relative position of the textual object;
• calculate a bin size such that at least one axis of the image is divided into a plurality of separate bins, wherein a distance between each bin along the at least one axis and its adjacent bin equals the bin size;
• discretize the relative position based on the bin size to determine a discretized position of the textual object;
• and
• provide the discretized position and a textual content of the textual object as an input to a machine learning model.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having software encoded thereon, the software, when executed by one or more computing devices operable to:

• receive, by a computing device, an image of a document;
• automatically determine, by the computing device, an absolute position of the textual object in the image of the scanned document based upon a pixel resolution of the image, the absolute position comprising pixel-based x-y coordinates defining a bounding box around the textual object;
• normalize, by the computing device, the absolute position based upon the pixel resolution of the image to generate a relative position of the textual object;
• calculate, by the computing device, a bin size such that at least one axis of the image is divided into a plurality of separate bins, wherein a distance between each bin along the at least one axis and its adjacent bin equals the bin size;
• discretize, by the computing device, the relative position based on the bin size to determine a discretized position of the textual object;
• and
• provide, by the computing device, the discretized position and a textual content of the textual object as an input to a machine learning model.