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US 2020/0050845 A1Published application
Method and system for extracting information from an image of a filled form document
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsAntonio Foncubierta Rodriguez, Maria Gabrani, Guillaume Jaume
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of determining a hierarchy of a blank template using an image of the blank template and using the determined hierarchy for providing labels and field values of text lines of a filled form document.
Claims14
A method of extracting information from an image of a filled form document, the form document comprising labeled fields comprising values and arranged in sections of the document, the method comprising:
- providing an image of a blank template of the form document;
- extracting first text lines from the image of the blank template using a text line recognizer of an optical character recognition (OCR) system;
- performing using the OCR system an optical character recognition of the extracted first text lines resulting in first machine-encoded text lines;
- merging the first machine encoded text lines into candidate sections based on the location of the first text lines in the blank template;
- evaluating for each candidate section a set of predefined features indicative of the text lines and their location;
- combining the evaluated features of each candidate section to generate an identifier of the candidate section, resulting in multiple identifiers;
- determining sets of candidate sections that each share a respective identifier of the multiple identifiers;
- selecting a set of candidate sections of the sets of sections that fulfills a predefined selection criterion based on the number of sections and number of respective fields;
- determining as the hierarchy of the blank template the selected set of candidate sections;
- extracting second text lines from the image of the filled form document using the text line recognizer;
- performing using the OCR system an optical character recognition of the extracted second text lines resulting in second machine-encoded text lines;
- merging the second machine encoded text lines into text regions based on the location of the second text lines;
- for each second text line of the filled form document:
- identifying the section of the determined hierarchy that matches the second text line based on the region of the second text line;
- determining the first text line of the section that corresponds to the second text line by comparing the second text line with the first text lines, and determining the label of the field of the second text line and the position of the label within the filled form using the determined first text line;
- using the determined labels for identifying and extracting field values of the second text lines;
- comparing each of the field values with the determined labels for assigning the field value to a respective label of the determined labels.
14 more elements
A computer system for extracting information from an image of a filled form document, the form document comprising labeled fields comprising values and arranged in sections of the document, the computer system comprising an image of a blank template of the form document, the computer system being configured for:
- extracting first text lines from the image of the blank template using a text line recognizer of an optical character recognition (OCR) system;
- performing using the OCR system an optical character recognition of the extracted first text lines resulting in first machine-encoded text lines;
- merging the first machine encoded text lines into candidate sections based on the location of the first text lines in the blank template;
- evaluating for each candidate section a set of predefined features indicative of the text lines and their location;
- combining the evaluated features of each candidate section to generate an identifier of the candidate section, resulting in multiple identifiers;
- determining sets of candidate sections that each share a respective identifier of the multiple identifiers;
- selecting a set of candidate sections of the sets of sections that fulfills a predefined selection criterion based on the number of sections and number of respective fields;
- determining as the hierarchy of the blank template the selected set of candidate sections;
- extracting second text lines from the image of the filled form document using the text line recognizer;
- performing using the OCR system an optical character recognition of the extracted second text lines resulting in second machine-encoded text lines;
- merging the second machine encoded text lines into text regions based on the location of the second text lines;
- for each second text line of the filled form document:
- identifying the section of the determined hierarchy that matches the second text line based on the region of the second text line;
- determining the first text line of the section that corresponds to the second text line by comparing the second text line with the first text lines, and determining the label of the field of the second text line and the position of the label within the filled form using the determined first text line;
- using the determined labels for identifying and extracting field values of the second text lines;
- comparing each of the field values with the determined labels for assigning the field value to a respective label of the determined labels.
13 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.