Apparatus for recognizing machine generated or handprinted text

An apparatus for recognizing whether text in an image is machine print or hand print, the apparatus comprising:

• a feed forward neural network processor for processing digital information;
• a memory for storing digital information processed by said feed forward neural network processor,
• an image reader for reading an image containing text into the memory in pixel format;
• a means for separating the image into horizontal lines of text, using a horizontal histogram of pixel counts;
• a means for processing each said horizontal line of text into a vertical histogram;
• a convolving means for convolving across the vertical histograms with each of a plurality of templates, each template representing a spatial filter, accumulating the responses for each template from each horizontal position of the vertical histograms as each template is convolved across the vertical histograms, the accumulated responses from each of the templates collectively forming a spectra having high frequency components and low frequency components and whose characteristic is dependent on whether it is machine printed or hand printed;
• and
• the feed forward neural network processor looking for the relative relationship of high frequency to low frequency components for classifying the spectra as machine print or hand print, said neural network having the spectra as input and weight means for multiplying the spectra input at nodes and accumulating a final output thereof at final output nodes, with a first output providing an indication that the text contained in the image is machine print, with high frequencies having high relative amplitude, and a second output providing an indication that the text contained in the image is hand print with low frequencies having high relative amplitudes.