SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OPTICAL RECOGNITION OF BAR-CODED CHARACTERS USING TEMPLATE MATCHING

A system and method are disclosed for optical scanning and recognition of bar-coded characters such as CMC7 type fonts having a pattern of bars and intervals recorded on documents such as bank drafts and checks. The system includes an imaging device for forming a digitized matrix having rows and columns of a character to be recognized. A processor and an associated program are used for rotating the digitized image to facilitate processing in a word size used by the processor. A memory is used for storing templates of the characters to be recognized to enable the processor to perform template matching. The apparatus and method also include first, second, and third bit configurations used in identifying a character.