This master’s thesis describes the work in creating a customised optical character recognition (OCR) application; intended for use in digitisation of theses submitted to the Uppsala University in the 18th and 19th centuries. For this purpose, an open source software called Gamera has been used for recognition and classification of the characters in the documents. The software provides specific algorithms for analysis of heritage documents and is designed to be used as a tool for creating domain-specific (i.e. customised) recognition applications. By using the Gamera classifier training interface, classifier data was created which reflects the characters in the particular theses. The data can then be used in automatic recognition of ‘new’ characters, by loading it into one of Gamera’s classifiers. The output of Gamera are sets of classified glyphs (i.e. small images of characters), stored in an XML-based format. However, as OCR typically involves translation of images of text into a machine-readable format, a complementary OCR-module was needed. For this purpose, an external Gamera module for page segmentation was modified and used. In addition, a script for control of the OCR-process was created, which initiates the page segmentation on Gamera classified glyphs. The result is written to text files. Finally, in a test for recognition accuracy, one of the theses was used for creation of training data and for test of data. The result from the test show an average accuracy rate of 82% and that there is a need for a better pre-processing module which removes more noise from the images, as well as recognises different character sizes in the images before they are run by the OCR-process.

This thesis focuses on a problem of character recognition from real scenes, which has earned significant amount of attention with the development of modern technology. The aim of the paper is to use an algorithm that has state-of-art performance on standard data sets and apply it for the recognition task. The chosen algorithm is a convolution network with deep structure where the application of the specified model has not yet been published. The implemented solution is built on theoretical parts which are provided in comprehensive overview. Two types of neural network are used in the practical part: a multilayer perceptron and the convolution model. But as the complex structure of the convolution networks gives much better performance compare with the classification error of the MLP on the first data set, only the convolution structure is used in the further experiments. The model is validated on two public data sets that correspond with the specification of the task. In order to obtain an optimal solution based on the data structure several tests had been made on the modificated network and with various adjustments on the input data. Presented solution provided comparable prediction rate compare to the best results of the other studies while using artificially generated learning pattern. In conclusion, the thesis describes possible extensions and improvements of the model, which should lead to the decrease of the classification error.

This thesis deals with the evaluation forms using optical character recognition. Image processing and methods used for OCR is described in the first part of thesis. In the practical part is created database of sample characters. The chosen method is based on correlation between patterns and recognized characters. The program is designed in a graphical environment MATLAB. Finally, several forms are evaluated and success rate of the proposed program is detected.

This thesis describes the design and workflow of creating an image processing application in Android system, and what are the possibilities in choosing development environment and how to implement them. Then I am writing about my solutions of creating applications, graphical user interface and an interface for Android. I am describing my approach in the design and functionality of the application, communication with the camera, storing and retrieving data. Further I explain which algorithms were implemented for image processing and image evaluation. Product of this thesis is a functioning application that allows to its user to capture images and video stream. The algorithm evaluates the entering data and shows the location of the number plate. The application also allows recognizing texts and numbers from images. There are other various practical features and options implemented within the application.

This thesis describes the design of the image processing for Android system, consisting of the choice of the development environment and its implementation. Workflow solution to the problem involves development of the Androidapplication and it’s graphical user interface. The text includes description of the application functionality, communicationwith a camera, storing and retrieving data. It also describes used algorithms and image processing methods used for detecting values from the counter of the gas meter.

This master’s thesis is focused on anonymization of ultrasound data in DICOM format. Haar wavelet belonging to Daubechies wavelet family is used to detect text areas in the image. Extraction of the text from the image is done using a free tool - tesseract OCR Engine. Finally, detected text is compared to sensitive data from DICOM metadata using Levenshtein - edit distance algorithm.

Am Institut für Print- und Medientechnik an der TU Chemnitz wird ein System entwickelt, welches gescannte Dokumente archivieren soll. Im Gegensatz zu bereits existierenden OCR-Systemen, sollen diese Dokumente hier jedoch nicht mittels einer Schrifterkennung verarbeitet werden. Vielmehr sind Textbereiche in den gescannten Vorlagen zu vektorisieren. Bereiche mit Grafiken und Illustrationen werden bei diesem Verfahren als ein Bildvektor gespeichert. Diese Vorgehensweise soll es ermöglichen, auch Dokumente mit Schriftsymbolen effizient zu archivieren, die keinen "herkömmlichen" Schriftsätzen zugehörig sind. Diese Studienarbeit stellt Merkmalsextraktionsverfahren vor, die aus einem gegebenen Teil (Segment) eines Dokumentenscans Merkmale extrahieren, die es ermöglichen sollen, diesen mittels eines Klassifikationsverfahrens einer Klasse Textblock oder einer Klasse Grafikblock zuzuordnen. Zusätzlich werden zwei Klassifikationsverfahren, ein Entscheidungsbaum und eine Fuzzy-Logik, auf die Nutzbarkeit für einen solchen Mustererkennungsprozess überprüft. Als Textblöcke erkannte Bereiche werden im zu entwickelnden Gesamtverfahren dann in nachfolgenden Verarbeitungsschritten einer Vektorisierung zugeführt.

The goal of this project is to create a mobile phone application, which can use phone camera to get a photography. This photography contains text, application has an ability to find a text, recognize all characters and send output as SMS. In this application there are implemented algorithms for text recognize from pictures based on Hidden Markovov Models. The particular stress is put on training of the model, to maximalise a succes of text recognition. There are some experiments model training with model variables, which are leading in better ability of text recognition. It was achieved a value of 97% succesfully recognized characters.

Internet of Things (IoT) are becoming increasingly popular replacements for their analogue counterparts. However, there is still demand to keep analogue equipment that is already installed, while also having automated monitoring of the equipment, such as analogue water meters. A proposed solution for this problem is to install a battery powered add-on component that can optically read meter values using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and transmit the readings wirelessly. Two ways to do this could be to either offload the OCR process to a server, or to do the OCR processing locally on the add-on component. Since water meters are often located where reception is weak and the add-on component is battery powered, a suitable technology for data transmission could be Long Range (LoRa) because of its low-power and long-range capabilities. Since LoRa has low transfer rate there is a need to keep data transfers small in size, which could make offloading a less favorable alternative compared to local OCR processing. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to research the feasibility, in terms of energy efficiency, of doing local OCR processing on the add-on component. The feasibility condition of this study is defined as being able to continually read an analogue meter for a 10-year lifespan, while consuming under 2600 milliampere hours (mAh) of energy. The two OCR algorithms developed for this study are a specialized OCR algorithm that utilizes pattern matching principles, and a Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD) OCR algorithm. These two algorithms have been compared against each other, to determine which one is more suitable for the system. This comparison yielded that the SAD algorithm was more suitable, and was then studied further by using different image resolutions and settings to determine if it was possible to further reduce energy consumption. The results showed that it was possible to significantly reduce energy consumption by reducing the image resolution. The study also researched the possibility of reducing energy consumption further by not reading all digits on the tested water meter, depending on the measuring frequency and water flow. The study concluded that OCR processing is feasible on an energy critical driven system when reading analouge meters, depending on the measuring frequency.

Allt fler företag letar efter effektiva sätt att utföra repetitiva uppgifter. Författaren kom i kontakt med företaget Etteplan, som manuellt granskar olika handlingar (dokument) för att hitta och notera eventuella felaktigheter. Uppdraget författaren fick av Etteplan bestod av att implementera en automatiseringslösning som automatiskt granskar dessa handlingar och identifierar eventuella felaktigheter i handlingens tabellhuvud, som sedan presenteras i en Excel-fil. Dessa felaktigheter kan vara att de olika fälten har fel format eller att fälten är tomma.Författarens syfte var att utveckla och utvärdera denna automatiseringslösning och ta reda på hur automatiseringslösningen mottogs av Etteplan, samt vilka förbättringsförslag som framkom. För att utveckla automatiseringslösningen har flera tekniker använts, som till exempel programmeringsspråket Python, OCR-verktyget PyTesseract och datorseende-biblioteket OpenCV. Automatiseringslösningen utvecklades och utvärderades iterativt med stöd av Design Science Research tillsammans med enhetstester, acceptanstester, ”tänka högt”-sessioner och semi-strukturerade intervjuer, där automatiseringslösningen testades av slutanvändaren på Etteplan. Under utvärderingssessionerna framkom bland annat uppfattningar om lösningens funktionalitet, utseende och layout samt förbättringsförslag. Studiens resultat indikerar att automatiseringslösningen uppfattades som positiv av slutanvändarna samt att den kan skapa mervärde på Etteplan. Ett flertal förbättringsförslag framkom, exempelvis att Excel-rapportens utformning kan förbättras. Det framkom även önskemål om ny funktionalitet, exempelvis att fler filformat skulle gå att granska, så som TIFF- och DWG-filer.