Patent US 6,236,735

A two camera over-the-belt optical character recognition (OCR) system for reading the destination addresses on parcels carried on a conveyor belt. The parcels bear an orientation defining fluorescent ink fiduciary mark that is typically stamped on the parcel in the same area as the destination address. The fiduciary mark is located approximately in the center of the destination address block and oriented in the same direction as the underlying destination address. The first camera, a low resolution CCD camera, captures an image of the fiduciary mark. A host computer stores an image of the fiduciary mark, determines the position and orientation of the fiduciary mark, and defines a region of interest about the fiduciary mark. The second camera, a high resolution CCD camera, captures a grey-scale image of the conveyor and the parcels carried on the conveyor. The host computer extracts and stores the portion of the high resolution image that is within the region of interest including the text defining the destination address of the parcel. The host computer then rotates and displays the text image and/or transmits the text image to a text reader.