Zonal Recognition

SmartZone ICR/OCR include the following functionality for ICR/OCR recognition.

Recognition through Character Sets

It is the ability to recognize hand-printed text (for ICR) or machine printed text (for OCR) based on predefined CharacterSets (ICR: CharacterSet; OCR: CharacterSet).

• These character sets include uppercase, lowercase, and mixed case alphabetic, alphanumeric, digits, currency symbols, combined currency and digits, symbols, phone, and punctuation characters.
• The Language property (ICR: Language; OCR: Language) may be specified, or the default value of WesternEuropean which includes all supported languages may be used. 
• Optimal recognition will be obtained by using the smallest language set that includes all expected characters.
• The ability to limit possible recognition results within defined character sets as needed is also provided. Recognition will be improved by constraining the list of possible results as closely as possible, while still including all possible results.

See Define and Edit Character Sets for more information.

Recognition through Field Type

The ability to specify the format of the field allows for greater accuracy. SmartZone ICR/OCR support predefined field types of currency, date, time, email, URL, Social Security number, and United States phone number.

• If the field is of a known format and not general text, then recognition can be improved by attempting to recognize the image to the format.
• If the data is in a different format, then SmartZone ICR/OCR allow custom format or “masking” using regular expression.
• If the data is a list of known entries, such as, an employee list or part numbers, then SmartZone ICR/OCR support this with the DataValidationList.

See the following topics for more information: Define and Edit Field Types, Define and Edit Data Validation Lists, and Define and Edit Regular Expressions.

Confidence Values and Results

Recognition results and confidence value indicators are provided in all output.

See the Confidence Values and Determine Results sections for more information on confidence and results.

Ability to Modify Results of Recognition

The ability to modify character recognition results is available to increase accuracy through the CharacterResult class (ICR: CharacterResult; OCR: CharacterResult).