IAEAInternational Atomic Energy Agency

International Atomic Energy Agency

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

OCR at INIS

INIS Training Seminar7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

Branko Krznarić

(based on the presentation by Yves Reynaud)INIS Unit

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Outline

• What is OCR?• OCR Objectives• Principles• Techniques• Software

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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What is OCR?

(source: pcmag.com)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

• OCR is the “conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text.” [1]

• Make digitized images of printed documents searchable.

• Font encoding issues.

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OCR Objectives

We can “find the needle in the haystack”

• OCR offers a basic search from an unstructured document.

• OCR adds an extra value to your image.• OCR brings to life your digitized collection.

INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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OCR Techniques

• Pre-processing• De-skew• Despeckle• Binarization (optional)• Line removal• Layout analysis (zoning)

• Post-processing (dictionary)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Scanned vs. Vector Image

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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“Do not look at the trees (letters)try to see the forest (sentences)“

F0R 488UR1N6 7H3 L0N63V17Y 0F 1NF0RM4710N, P3RH4P8 7H3 M087 1MP0R74N7 R0L3 1N 7H3 0P3R4710N 0F 4 D16174L 4RCH1V3 18 M4N461N6 7H3 1D3N717Y, 1N736R17Y 4ND QU4L17Y 0F 7H3 4RCH1V38 1783LF 48 4 7RU873D 80URC3 0F 7H3 CUL7UR4L R3C0RD.

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Verdana Font

FOR ASSURING THE LONGEVITY OF INFORMATION, PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE OPERATION OF A DIGITAL ARCHIVE IS MANAGING THE IDENTITY, INTEGRITY AND QUALITY OF THE ARCHIVES ITSELF AS A TRUSTED SOURCE OF THE CULTURAL RECORD.

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Brush Script MT (Windows Font)

FOR ASSURING THE LONGEVITY OF INFORMATION, PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE OPERATION OF A DIGITAL ARCHIVE IS MANAGING THE IDENTITY, INTEGRITY AND QUALITY OF THE ARCHIVES ITSELF AS A TRUSTED SOURCE OF THE CULTURAL RECORD.

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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PCs ≠ Humans

• OCR compares patterns and selects the closest match. It can be forced to a specific context, but requires customization.

• People adapt to circumstances and can circumvent misspellings if context is clear.

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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True or false

Usually, printed text is adequately sampled if each line is at least two pixels in thickness:

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Zoom in

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Zoom in

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Results from OCR

It is in this context that I…

… and an additional protocol on the basis…

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Chinese Raster Image (scanned)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Chinese Vector Image (OCR)滤器

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Arabic Raster Image (scanned)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Arabic Vector Image (OCR)

ا هذوشملت

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Japanese Raster Image (scanned)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Japanese Vector Image (OCR)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Font Encoding

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Font Encoding (cont.)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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OCR Software

• Abbyy FineReader (multilingual OCR)• Adobe Acrobat• InftyReader

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Abbyy FineReader (interface)

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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(12)where a . The indices now range from 1 to 5. The bosonic fields obey the commutation rules

(13)

InftyReader - an OCR System for Math Documents

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Reference

[1] “Optical character recognition” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition. Retrieved 2013-09-23.

IAEA INIS Training Seminar 7-11 October 2013, Vienna, Austria

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Thank you!