Data capture from multi-page documents

A data capture system, comprising:

• a memory to store at least one flexible structure description, each corresponding to a document, said flexible structure description comprising descriptions of structures in the document and detection information to facilitate detection of said structures in a document image corresponding to the document, wherein the detection information specifies whether a structure is to be detected with reference to its placement within a page of the document, or with reference to its placement within the document as a whole;
• and
• a processor to process scanned documents based on each flexible structure description.

A method for processing a batch of scanned images, the method comprising:

• processing the scanned images into documents;
• for documents comprising multiple pages maintaining a page-based coordinate system to specify a location of structures within a page and joining the pages to form a multi-page sheet having a sheet-based coordinate system to specify a location of structures within the multi-page sheet;
• performing a data extraction operation to extract data from each document, said data extraction operation comprising a page mode wherein structures are detected on individual pages using the page-based coordinate system and a document mode wherein structures are detected within the entire document using the sheet-based coordinate system.