The following messages give widely opposing points of view. The reason could be, as one stated, that the bottom of the line scanner and OCR combinations are not yet good enough, at least for that person's particular needs. My own observation is that it might simply be the wrong tool for the wrong application. We all see more and more features in calculators that are under $100, and even under $10, to the point where no one is really going to say the TI-84 has no improvements over the previous versions, even if you get it for $60, as the price was where I saw it last. If your applications are simple four function arithmetic, there isn't much point in comparing any new calculators-- they will all do what you want, and the hardware may be a more important aspect than the software. . . how long the calculator and/or the batteries will last, etc. To those who really need a supercomputer, no difference. The same is most likely true of scanners and OCR combos-- some improvements may not apply to what YOU are doing and others may be totally beyond any appplications you have a mind to be using. The same is true for all those different kinds of cheaper calculators out there. It sounds a little as if one person in this conversation, I didn't keep track of various portions and names, was an example of the person who says it does not matter at all, because none of them create perfect results. To this kind of person it doesn't matter how full a glass is getting, until that very last drop is added, then that glass becomes full, otherwise it is empty. The exact same thing has been said here and there via the error rate for eBooks. If a certain element of perfection is missing, then ebook value remains zero even though the paper book has errors. By the way, I saw what appeared to be a perfect scan/OCR, at least 10 years ago, perhaps 15, on the original Apple- Flatbed scanner. I forget the model and the OCR, but the demonstration certainly made me wake up to OCR more and I eventually talked Apple into giving me a Mac and scanner. Thanks Apple!!! Thanks Steve Cisler!!! More to the point about the current topic is what a user wants out of the hardware/software combination. If you don't do your homework when buying these, you are not likely to get what you want. However, and I stress this, the people in these messages are VERY likely, given their positions, to find salesmen and saleswomen who would be MORE than happy to show your people their products and answer questions. Just contact them. . .your report of their demonstration will multiply the effect of their work! This would probably be of great interest to us all. I wonder if the next time we have some kind of meeting-- should we invite some demonstrations??? Michael PS On the topic of calculator, I heard that even if it is not your thing to use something like Encarta, that the current version includes a calculator program that may be worth more than the cost of the entire Encarta. Anyone seen it? On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Holden McGroin wrote:
Hi!
On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 12:33 +0100, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
Hello,
Am 10.03.2006 um 11:24 schrieb Holden McGroin:
On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 10:32 +0100, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
text. Today, dictionaries are used to guess which words are to be recognised. That is why the OCR systems today give us better results if the original has DECENT quality!!!
The pattern recognition systems have not gotten better and the dictionary trick takes the motivation away to develop better OCR algorithms.
I'm going to have to call bullshit here. As a researcher working in the field of document recognition, I've noticed tremendous improvements in OCR quality even just in the past five years. Before you start to swear, read and understand! Maybe in the development labs, but not for the non-high end user!!!!
OCR results are improving across the board. One only has to compare Finereader 8, a mainstream OCR product, with version 5 or so to see the improvement in standard OCR packages over the last 5 years. Recognition quality improves (where there is room for improvement) and so does the range of documents which can be recognised. Each passing year brings improvements in quality for older, noisy and lower quality documents. Again, I stress that this is *real-world* improvement in mainstream OCR products.
In your initial post, you stated that the "dictionary trick" takes away the motivation to develop better OCR algorithms. Yet, it is still an extremely active research subject. Perhaps you're not familiar with the research community around OCR but there are many major conferences, workshops and journals devoted entirely or mainly to the task of digitising documents.
And of course, where do you think the improvements in mainstream OCR applications come from? Yesterday's innovation in the research lab forms the basis of new features in today's commercial OCR packages. Likewise, the work that's going on now in the lab will improve tomorrow's OCR packages.
We have not seen any improvements in the field for the past five years!!! The improvements are mainly due to the use of dictionaries!! Not the improvement of character recognition!! Most systems in the field get their performance out of word recognition !!!
Well, that's a nice statement to make since the vast majority of systems in the field are black-box commercial systems. How do you know where the performance comes from? I'm a researcher in the field. I attend conferences and read journals and I don't know much about the internals of ABBYY. Unsurprisingly, it's something they keep under close wraps.
So all you really have is the fact that commercial (and research) OCR systems are improving and your unfounded assertion that the improvements are mainly due to dictionaries.
I did mean to say not there is no improvement in Optical Character Recognition, but the improvment over the past 10 years is minimal at most. When I see a OCR system that just uses raw results, then I will bow my head in recognition of true achieve meant. Furthermore, when the image processing gets that far it will open up new possiblities in all kinds of sciences.
There are countless tools which can be used to improve OCR performance. Using dictionary lookups is just one tool in the box. OCR is improving using many different techniques. I've been observing improvements in many different areas over the last few years (as long as I've been in the area), including:
- Improvements in low-level Image processing techniques - Improvements in feature extraction from characters - Improvements in character recognition based on those features
If you don't like dictionary lookups, don't use them. Raw OCR performance is improving in the lab and in the marketplace and is already great for a large proportion of documents. I must apologise on behalf of the research community if you find the rate of progress to be inadequate.
That said, if you don't like it, muck in. There are many research labs around the world working on improving OCR and related techniques and I'm sure they'd be glad to have someone as knowledgeable as yourself join. There are even a few Free Software / Open Source OCR systems which would gladly welcome any interested developers:
Ocrad: http://www.gnu.org/software/ocrad/ocrad.html GOCR/JOCR: http://jocr.sourceforge.net/ ClaraOCR: http://www.geocities.com/claraocr/
Cheers, Holden
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