Document processing system and method

A document processing system for processing documents having data printed thereon including colored markings having a hue and visible to the eye, but which are not to be read by the system, and characters having a color which are to be read by the system comprising:

• means for scanning a document and for generating a plurality of colored picture elements;
• means for identifying the color of the characters appearing on the document;
• means for converting all colors of markings appearing on the document to a color of the background of the document except for said identified color of characters appearing on the document, thereby generating a filtered image of the document;
• optical character recognition means for receiving said filtered image of the document representing character information only and for identifying characters appearing on the document from said filtered image, such that the markings and the background surrounding a character are not distinguishable by said optical character recognition means;
• and
• said means for converting including means for subtracting a percentage of the hue that is complementary to the hue of the markings from the hue to the markings, such that the background surrounding a character is detected by said optical character recognition means as the colors of the markings.

A method for processing documents having data printed thereon including markings having an interior core area bounded by an edge, the markings having a hue and visible to the eye, but which are not to be read by the system and the data includes characters which are to be read by the system comprising the steps of:

• scanning a document and generating a plurality of colored picture elements;
• identifying colors included within the core area and edge of the markings;
• converting the colors of the picture elements of the core area and edge of the markings to a color of the background of the document thereby generating a filtered image of the document;
• subtracting a percentage of the hue that is complementary to the hue of the markings from the hue of the markings, such that the background surrounding a character is detected by said optical character recognition means as the colors of the markings;
• and
• identifying the characters appearing on the document from the filtered image.

A method for processing documents having data printed thereon including colored markings having a hue and visible to the eye, but which are not to be read by the system, and characters having a color which are to be read by the system comprising the steps of:

• scanning a document and generating a plurality of colored picture elements;
• identifying the color of the characters appearing on the document;
• converting all colors of markings appearing on the document to a color of the background of the document except for the identified color of characters appearing on the document, thereby generating a filtered image of the document by subtracting a percentage of the hue that is complementary to the hue of the markings from the hue of the markings;
• and
• identifying characters appearing on the document from the filtered image.