SmartZone ICR / OCR

The SmartZone ICR / OCR software development toolkit (SDK) provides zonal ICR (hand-printed, intelligent character recognition) and zonal OCR (machine-printed, optical character recognition) technology for use within either .NET or ActiveX COM development environments.
Commonly used in forms processing applications, this toolkit internally employs multiple independent recognition techniques to verify results and improve accuracy. ScanFix Xpress Lite and ImagXpress Standard are included in the SDK for image cleanup, image handling and TWAIN scanning.
Here are some key features of "SmartZone ICR / OCR":

Technical Notes

· Programming environments: Win32 visual development environments including Visual Studio 2008
· Sample code is included for: VB.NET, C#, VB, Delphi, VC++, HTML
· Object-oriented API for .NET users
· Deploys within .NET as a managed control and is fully compliant with .NET 1.0 and above
· Can also be used in any development environment that hosts ActiveX COM controls
· Can be used in a multi-threaded environment and perform synchronous thread-safe processing (more).
· Support user-specified debug logging levels
· Both editions include 4 controls: SmartZone, ScanFix, ImagXpress, and TwainPRO
· Client/server Web development capabilities
· Perform operations on bitonal images (may be converted to bitonal from color sources)
· Two processing speeds are available (Standard and Professional editions)
· Free full-featured trial version available for immediate download

Zone Definition & Processing

· Perform recognition on defined zones
· Perform image cleanup on defined zones

Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)

· Recognize hand-printed American and European English characters using pre-defined character sets: uppercase, lowercase, mixed case alphabetic, digits, currency (including $ (dollar), ¢(cent) € (Euro) £ (pound), ¥(Yen)), arithmetic and punctuation characters (including period, comma, single quote, double quote, ! & ( ) ? @ { } # % * + - / : ; < = >).
· Tailor recognition results by specifying custom character sets containing only expected values
· Return confidence values for each individual character, as well as the complete ICR result, to help manage the recognition process
· Return alternate character results with associated confidence values
· Specify the rejection character provided when recognition of a character fails
· Specify the confidence level below which the rejection character is returned
· Specify recognition segmentation parameters
· Support English characters only

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

· Recognize text using pre-defined character sets, including uppercase, lowercase, mixed case alphabetic, digits, currency symbols, combined currency and digits, arithmetic symbols and punctuation characters
· Limit recognition to customer defined subsets of supported character sets
· Return confidence values for each individual character, as well as the complete OCR result, to help manage the recognition process
· Return multiple character results with associated confidence values
· Specify the rejection character provided when recognition of a character fails
· Specify the confidence level below which the rejection character is returned
· Specify recognition segmentation parameters
· Support English characters only

Image Input, Image Output, and Image Handling

· SmartZone includes ImagXpress Standard (read the full ImagXpress Standard v8 product description) for basic image conversion, image processing, and TWAIN scanning
· Support image data transfer with other components

Bitonal Image Cleanup

· SmartZone Professional and Standard editions include ScanFix Xpress Lite (read the full ScanFix Xpress Lite v5 features) for bitonal image cleanup technology such as deskew, despeckle, rotate, mirror, flip and more

FormAssist Application with Source Code

· Quickly evaluate Pegasus Imagings forms processing technology, including:
Form identification (FormFix)
Form dropout (FormFix)
Zonal OCR (SmartZone)
OMR (FormFix)
Image display/editing (ImagXpress)
Image cleanup (ScanFix Xpress)
· Use FormAssist source code as a foundation for developing your production forms processing application:
Illustrates best practice for integration of Pegasus components and example workflow
Modular source code facilitates rapid development of form setup and forms processing solutions
Included in the FormSuite .NET toolkit download as C# source code
· Quickly set up forms and processing instructions
Create, save, and manage form sets
Add form templates to form sets
Set up and add fields to form templates
Configure properties for image cleanup, OCR, OMR, and processing
Process filled images to optimize settings for OCR, OMR, and form identification