US 2016/0239716 A1 · TARGETED OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION (OCR) FOR MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide concepts for correcting optical character recognition (OCR) errors from and OCR scan result by sequentially applying an anagram hash (AH) and Levenshtein-Distance (LD) measurement for concurrent character identity-based (machine code) and character shape-based (OCR-Key) corrections. The OCR-Key classifies characters by shape into one or more disjoint and overlapping classes. Similar shaped-based classes appearing in consecutive characters are appended to a cardinality term, a repetition count of the class. The LD measurement groups OCR-Keys and differentiates on both class and cardinality to arrive at a shape-based mismatch error between competing candidate words from an associated dictionary and a target word from the OCR scan. The shape-based LD measurement errors are then functionally merged with the character identity-based deletion, substitution, and insertion errors to find a minimum error for the set of candidate words, corresponding to the preferred candidate word match to the target word.

Claims42

Dependent claims

A method for correcting optical character recognition (OCR) errors from an OCR scan result, comprising:

registering an OCR machine code from the OCR scan result;
mapping the registered OCR machine code to one or more of an OCR-Key according to one or more character shape functions;
selecting, from a dictionary, a first set of candidate words as possible matches to the registered OCR machine code;
selecting, from the dictionary, a second set of candidate words as possible matches to the OCR-Key;
calculating a set of errors between the second set of candidate words and the OCR machine code and the OCR-Key;
and
selecting a preferred candidate word from the second set of candidate words with the smallest set of errors.

4 more elements

An apparatus for correcting optical character recognition (OCR) errors from an OCR scan result, said apparatus comprising a processing device and a memory-storing computer-executable instructions, the memory and the computer-executable instructions configured to, with the processing device, cause the apparatus to:

register an OCR machine code from the OCR scan result;
map the registered OCR machine code to one or more of an OCR-Key according to one or more character shape functions;
select, from a dictionary, a first set of candidate words as possible matches to the registered OCR machine code;
select, from the dictionary, a second set of candidate words as possible matches to the OCR-Key;
calculate a set of errors between the second set of candidate words and the OCR machine code and the OCR-Key;
and
select a preferred candidate word from the second set of candidate words with the smallest set of errors.

4 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing machine-readable program code for causing, when executed, one or more devices to perform the following functions for correcting optical character recognition (OCR) errors from an OCR scan result:

register an OCR machine code from the OCR scan result;
map the registered OCR machine code to one or more of an OCR-Key according to one or more character shape functions;
select, from a dictionary, a first set of candidate words as possible matches to the registered OCR machine code;
select, from the dictionary, a second set of candidate words as possible matches to the OCR-Key;
calculate a set of errors between the second set of candidate words and the OCR machine code and the OCR-Key;
and
select a preferred candidate word from the second set of candidate words with the smallest set of errors.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Targeted optical character recognition (ocr) for medical terminology

Life of this patent

Targeted optical character recognition (ocr) for medical terminology

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims42