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Understanding how OCR works: a guide for lawyers

What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology converts text from digital documents, such as PDFs of bank and credit card statements, into machine-readable data. This process is invaluable for lawyers, helping them save time and improve case outcomes.

How does OCR work?

Preprocessing

Preprocessing enhances document clarity to ensure the text is as clear as possible for accurate recognition. Techniques used include noise reduction to eliminate visual distortions, skew correction to align the text properly, and contrast adjustment to improve differentiation between text and the background. These adjustments help the OCR software accurately detect and interpret the text, setting a solid foundation for the subsequent steps in the OCR process.

Text detection

Text detection involves identifying text regions within a document. OCR software distinguishes text from non-text elements such as images, tables, and graphics. It analyzes the document’s layout and structure, separating different blocks of text, paragraphs, and lines. This step is crucial for accurate recognition, as it ensures that only relevant text is processed, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the OCR system.

Character recognition

Character recognition involves the use of advanced algorithms to analyze the shapes of characters. The process compares detected characters with stored patterns, identifies key features such as lines and curves, and employs machine learning to improve accuracy by training on large datasets.

Postprocessing

Postprocessing corrects errors in the recognized text using techniques such as spell checking and contextual analysis. This step ensures high accuracy and reliability of the extracted data by correcting typographical errors and making intelligent adjustments based on the surrounding text context.