Over the past few years, OCR technology has made such drastic advancements, that it can recognize human handwriting present in a document or a file. Researchers have been aiming at developing such software that is capable of recognizing human cursive handwriting. Thus handwriting OCR software was brought into existence. OCR for handwriting is analogous to speech processing which is aimed at decoding the natural human language and design systems. Many companies have come up with handwriting OCR and presently this software is widely used by various Business industries.
Methods and Strategies
Methods and strategies of OCR handwriting largely depend on the nature of the data to be analyzed. In cursive human handwriting, the problem arises due to the words being linked to one another and poorly written. On the other hand, hand printed word recognition is similar to recognizing printed words. The letters are individual and well written with enough spacing between them. OCR handwriting techniques are classified based on two criteria: the way processing is performed, and the algorithm being used. The following steps must be followed for the purpose of OCR handwriting recognition- 1) Scan the document first. 2) Place the scanned document in the PDF icon library. 3) Set the Button property in the options tab as icon. 4) Choose Signature PDF in the Choose icon option. 5) Secure the Button by clicking the Lock and Read Only option
Future of Handwriting OCR
There are many commercial products available in the market, which are capable of recognizing hand printed characters. Research has shown that that in OCR handwriting software, cursive word recognition is possible for when strong sentence syntax is used. The best handwriting OCR technology is still evolving mainly by coding and decoding the information written by hand. Analysis of Handwritten text, ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) will become better and faster as it scans the original handwriting, and produce similar results to the OCR program. However, at present ICR is in its infancy and there are a lot of developments expected in this field till it can be used as an alternative to OCR handwriting.