METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EXTRACTING RULED LINES OR REGION SURROUNDING RULED LINES

A family register document is divided into a plurality of regions, and the type of family register document is identified on the basis of the features of the divided regions. The division result is checked on the basis of stored format information of the family register document corresponding to the identified type. In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, after a family register document is divided into a plurality of regions, characters present in the divided regions are recognized. The recognition result is compared with stored character information, and the type of family register document is identified based on a result of this comparison. According to another embodiment of the invention, ruled lines included in a family register document are extracted, and the type of family register document is identified based on features of the extracted ruled lines. The extraction result is checked based on format information of the family register document corresponding to the identified type. Furthermore, the discrimination result is informed. In a further embodiment, after a family register document is divided into a plurality of regions, and the type of family register document is identified based on features of the divided regions, format information of the family register document corresponding to the identified type is assigned to each of the divided regions, and characters present in the assigned regions are recognized.