METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ISOLATING IMAGE DATA FOR CHARACTER RECOGNITION

A banking system in which this invention is used is disclosed. The system includes an imaging device which produces digitized image data of one side of documents, like checks, as they are moved along a document transporter. The system is designed to read, automatically, the "courtesy" or monetary amount of the documents from the digitized image data. Handwritten, courtesy amounts which have touching or overlapping characters or numbers must be separated or segmented prior to being subjected to character recognition. According to this invention, the digitized data is processed to "single out" image data which ostensibly contains data for more than one character. Special window "masks" are used to examine the image data (which is binary) to search for a potential joint between the "two characters". When the potential joint is found, potential segmentation vectors at different angles are examined to determine the preferred segmentation vector. The image data for more than one character is divided along the preferred segmentation vector and the divided image data is later subjected to character recognition.