Narrow Results

This chapter discusses recent developments of bank check analysis and recognition by computers. A technique for locating the courtesy amount block on bank checks and a deterministic finite autmaton for the segmentation and recognition of courtesy amount will be presented. In the analysis and recognition process, connected components in the image are identified first. Then, strings are constructed on the basis of proximity and horizontal alignment of characters. Next, a set of rules and heuristics are applied to these strings to choose the correct one. The chosen string is only accepted if it passes a verification test, which includes an attempt to recognize the currency sign. A deterministic finite automaton system is then used for segmenting the handprinted courtesy amount. Finally, the separated components are passed on to a neural network based recognition system.

The method of brackets is a new method originally developed in the context of definite integrals coming from the evaluation of Feynman diagrams. It consists on a small number of heuristic rules. The work presented here describes these rules and illustrates the method. The example presented here include elementary ones as well as two simple Feynman diagrams.