EFFICIENT GLOBALLY OPTIMAL INTERPRETATION OF DOCUMENTS

A method is provided for parsing a document having a plurality of lines on which items are listed spanning one or more lines. It includes: obtaining a plurality of candidates, representing hypothetical items within the document, each candidate spanning one or more lines and having a local cost representing a confidence in a quality of the candidate compared to a model; determining labeling costs for intervals of the document defined between pairs of lines, each interval containing candidates therein, each labeling cost reflecting a configuration of the candidates within the interval; identifying a best labeling for each interval based on the labeling costs determined for that interval, the best labeling corresponding to one of the configurations of the candidates within the interval; defining a global objective function; and selecting a subset of the candidates such that the global objective function is optimized, based on the identified best labelings.