FormFix

FormFix® is a forms identification, registration, and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) component. Its primary purpose is to speed the application development process of structured forms processing systems.

Form Recognition and Registration

FormFix uses a proprietary and industry-proven approach to form identification that matches a filled image of an unknown template to one of many template images in a set. It provides a confidence of the correctness of the match for the best matching template and other templates in the set. You can use the API to promote easy alignment of the filled image with the corresponding template image.

The form recognition and registration features offer:

• Ability to add multiple forms to a form template library. [ Accusoft.FormFixSdk Namespace : FormModelCollection Class ]
• Ability to identify incoming unknown images by matching them to a form template, returning form identification and confidence level information. [ Accusoft.FormFixSdk Namespace : IdentificationProcessor Class;  User Guide > How To > Identify and Register Images ]
• Ability to align (register) a filled form to its matching form template. [ User Guide > How To > Identify and Register Images ]
• Ability to limit identification operations to a subset of the available templates.
• Ability to identify and register forms even when the input filled form exhibits these characteristics:
  • Skew
  • Smaller image size than the template
  • Forms scanned at different resolutions than the template resolution
  • Rotated from the template
  • Warped images
  • Printing variations
• Support of simple form registration using registration marks. [link to Concepts topic?]
• Configurable settings to control the level of effort in completing form matching:
  • Selection and return of a best match
  • Return of a configurable number of additional potential matches
  • Return of a confidence value for each match performed

Drop-out

FormFix provides the capability to generate a clip of field in a filled form, and to optionally dropout the template from the image, leaving only the filled data in the resulting clip image.

FormFix’s drop-out feature offers:

• Support for form drop-out within specified regions of interest or the entire image to improve OCR, ICR, and OMR recognition accuracy. 
• Ability to reconstruct hand or machine printed characters that may have crossed the lines or guide text defining the form and were subsequently dropped out.
• Configurable application of stroke restoration across areas of the image where the form was removed.

OMR

FormFix uses models, templates, and an OMR processor to specify and perform OMR on forms, fields, and field sets. The OMR processor makes it easy to use with minimal configuration.

FormFix’s OMR feature offers: 

• Ability to define single or multiple mark zones for OMR (Optical Mark Recognition).
• Processing of two dimensional grids of bubbles, such as that used for defining name or identification number fields.
• Return of confidence values aids in catching multiple and questionable marks.
• Provides algorithms for advanced recognition and accuracy of multi-mark fields.
• Includes dropout processing prior to mark detection for most accurate recognition.

FormDirector

FormDirector™ is dedicated to integrating various Accusoft components into a robust forms-processing product. It handles all read and write operations of form definition files and form set files. It is capable of passing images via memory to any other Accusoft component or commercial product with a supported image transfer mechanism. 

FormDirector is designed to be easy to use with the other Accusoft components that you would find useful in your product. It is based on the open standard of XML and provides a flexible and extensible scheme to hold parameters for our components, as well as your components and even third-party components.

There are many parts to a forms processing system, during customer integration FormDirector fills two roles in such a system: 

• When setting up forms, FormDirector will assist you in organizing and storing the descriptions and control parameters that you will use while processing your forms. It will store that information into form set files (.frs) or form definition files (.frd).
• When you are processing forms, FormDirector will assist you in retrieving that information.

FormDirector features offer the ability to:

• Read, update and write form set files
• Read, update and write form definition files
• Create a new image for a field with pixels cropped from a source image (Field Clips)
• Ability to operate on many sets of templates
• Determine when the template images in the form definitions or form set have changed