OPTICAL CHARACTER READING METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR A DOCUMENT WITH RULED LINES AND ITS APPLICATION

A method of recognizing characters of a document including ruled lines. After separating the characters from the ruled lines, a bounding box and a corresponding character pattern are extracted for each character (hereinafter, “the character”). Contour information and ground (white pel area) information are extracted as fundamental features from the character pattern. Various statistical features are extracted based on the fundamental features. Various structural features are extracted based on the fundamental features and the character pattern. On the basis of the extracted statistical features, some candidates for the character and corresponding degrees of similarity are found to provide at least such one of the candidates as has largest degree(s) of similarity and degree(s) of similarity associated with the provided candidate(s). A final candidate for the character pattern is output based on the provided candidate(s), the provided degree(s) of similarity, the structural features and the bounding box.