US 7,606,408 B2 · Magnetic ink character reading method and program

Abstract

A magnetic ink character reading apparatus, magnetic ink character reading method and program, and a POS terminal apparatus reduce recognition errors and thereby improve the read rate. The magnetic ink character reading apparatus reads a text string of magnetic ink characters using both a magnetic reading mechanism and optical reading mechanism to obtain magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) results and optical character recognition (OCR) results, which are compared. The OCR process is repeated if the results differ. The positions of the read character blocks are compared to find character blocks that are offset perpendicularly to the base line of the magnetic ink characters, and the OCR process is repeated. The area to which the OCR process is applied again is near the position of the offset character block corrected in the direction perpendicular to the line of magnetic ink characters to be in line with the character blocks for which the MICR result and OCR result were the same.

Claims10

Dependent claims

A magnetic ink character reading apparatus, comprising:

a magnetic data acquisition unit configured to acquire magnetic data from a string of magnetic ink characters on a sheet-type medium;
a magnetic recognition unit configured to process the magnetic data;
an optical recognition unit configured to perform an optical recognition process on character recognition blocks of an image containing the string of magnetic characters, each block containing an image of one magnetic ink character and the character recognition blocks defining a recognition processing area;
and
a comparison unit configured to compare a first magnetic recognition result obtained from the magnetic recognition unit with a first optical recognition result obtained from the optical recognition unit;
wherein, when the comparison unit determines that the first magnetic recognition result and the first optical recognition result differ, the optical recognition unit identifies a re-recognition processing area offset in a substantially perpendicular direction with respect to at least a portion of the recognition processing area and performs the optical recognition process again on each character in the re-recognition processing area.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Magnetic ink character reading method and program

Life of this patent

Magnetic ink character reading method and program

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims10