Computer vision based text scanner

Published on 20 May 2021. Written by Amitesh Kumar

The OCR or optical character reader works in such a way that it detects the text in an image and displays it on the screen. Well, it's not that tough to build a character reader for ourselves. The text scanner works on some algorithm to portray the result. The step-by-step objectives of the project are as follows: -

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SLNOTE

• Detecting the Text from the image
• Converting the text into signals which the computer can read
• Displaying it on the screen

This computer vision project will also train us about image processing, text detection, text localization, text tracking, text binarization, and character recognition.

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Project Implementation – Computer vision-based text scanner

The OCR is used to classify the patterns and it consists of several steps such as segmentation, feature extraction, recognition, etc. The project will contain the Support Vector Machine and it is used to read the patterns on the image. The first step would be taking the image and saving it into JPEG or JPG format, later a copy of that image has to be saved as a document. Java or Python language can be used to code for the project.

The system will hence work in the following ways: -

• Text Detection: - In this process, the image will be input to the system and the OCR will detect the text in the image.
• Text localization: - Then, the image will be bounded by a tight boundary where the area covered will be read.
• Text Tracking: - This process involves text tracking in a video or moving picture.
• Text Binarization: - Then the text has to convert to the binary system and then the binary code will be compared to the alphabet library.
• Character recognition: - The last task would be identifying the character and then converting in the ASCII character.

This project can be used in several applications such as for visually impaired persons. The system will extract the text and display accurate characters. The java language would be the right language for this as it can easily convert images to numbers. The pixel reading ability of the programming language will be helpful for us. To scan the document well, we can use Adobe Scan.

To build this project with the help of python language we will need to download the python-tesseract from the internet. To set up the OCR server from python we will use Flask Web framework. To handle the virtual environment setup, we will be using Pipenv function which can be downloaded from the internet easily and for free. 

Conclusion

In this computer vision project, we will learn many algorithms for solving the problem. The system should also be trained for the problem and must be testes properly. The pictures containing the text may be blurry so the document has to be scanned well by some application. The system if worked well, it can easily text and can be implemented at various workplaces. The developer should possess some knowledge about java, python, image processing, text binarization, ASCII code manipulation, etc. to build this project easily.

SLDYK
Kit required to develop Computer vision based text scanner:

• No kit required

Technologies you will learn by working on Computer vision based text scanner:

• Python
• Computer vision
• Image processing

Any Questions?