Positioning templates in optical character recognition systems

An apparatus for identifying plural characters in an unknown character pattern, the unknown character pattern comprising two-dimensional pixel data, said apparatus comprising:

• a memory for storing the plural characters and program instruction sequences;
• and
• a processor for executing said program instruction sequences stored in said memory,
• wherein said program instruction sequences include (a) a first generating step to generate potentially matching characters for a first character position in the unknown character pattern, (b) a second generating step to generate potentially matching characters for a subsequent character position, wherein a spatial location of the subsequent character position is determined in accordance with a potentially matching character string for all previous character positions in the unknown character pattern, and wherein each potentially matching character generated for the subsequent character position is linked to the potentially matching character string, thereby forming plural new potentially matching character strings, and (c) an identifying step to identify the characters in the unknown character pattern in accordance with one of the potentially matching character strings that is most similar to the unknown character pattern.

Computer executable process steps stored on a computer readable medium to identify plural characters in an unknown character pattern, the unknown character pattern comprising two-dimensional pixel data, the process steps comprising:

• a first generating step to generate potentially matching characters for a first character position in the unknown character pattern;
• a second generating step to generate potentially matching characters for a subsequent character position, wherein a spatial location of the subsequent character position is determined in accordance with a potentially matching character string for all previous character positions in the unknown character pattern, and wherein each potentially matching character generated for the subsequent character position is linked to the potentially matching character string, thereby forming plural new potentially matching character strings;
• and
• an identifying step to identify the characters in the unknown character pattern in accordance with one of the potentially matching character strings that is most similar to the unknown character pattern.