Optical character reader

An optical character reader for detecting frame lines of a character entry frame printed on a medium in which a character is written comprising:

• scanning means for scanning the medium to produce a bit-mapped image of the medium;
• character contact determining means for determining whether the character is in contact with one of the frame lines of the character entry frame or not;
• intersection determining means for determining an intersection of the character and one of the frame lines of the character entry frame on the bit-mapped image of the medium when it is determined that the character is in contact with the one of the frame lines;
• and
• character-overlapped area determining means for determining a character-overlapped area of the one of the frame lines with which the character overlaps, said character-overlapped area determining means defining as the character-overlapped area a rectangular area of the bit-mapped image of the medium including the intersection determined by said intersection determining means.

An optical character reader for reading characters and character entry frames printed on a medium comprising:

• scanning means for scanning the medium to produce a bit-mapped image of the medium;
• character/character entry frame extracting means for extracting character images and character entry frame images from the bit-mapped image of the medium;
• labeling means for labeling the bit-mapped image of the medium so that the same label number is added to pixels representing one of the character images;
• character entry frame image location determining means for determining locations of the character entry frame images on the bit-mapped image of the medium;
• character entry frame image removing means for removing the character entry frame images from the bit-mapped image of the medium based on the locations of the character entry frame images determined by said character entry frame image location determining means;
• character pattern compensating means for compensating for a character pattern omission of the character images caused by removal of the character entry frame images from the bit-mapped image of the medium based on the label numbers added to the character images;
• character image isolating means for isolating the character images;
• and
• character recognition means for recognizing the character images isolated by said character image isolating means using template matching.