Structured Forms
Structured forms are documents that can be processed through the use of templates when performing document capture through import or scanning. This type of structured document has the data elements in the same, or repeatable, areas of the page. An example might be a DMV form that has a last name area that occurs at the same coordinates on a page. Structured documents or forms are typically processing through the following advanced capture features:
- Zone OCR – zoning is the best technology to extract structured data. Through the creation of zones on a page, optical character recognition can repeatedly identify and extract information.
- Anchoring – due to heavy use of zone OCR, page anchors must be in place to insure the zones register correctly on the page.
- Image processing – structured forms typically have heavy lines on the page, and most technologies removed these lines before performing OCR to increase accuracy.
Structured forms processing also utilizes Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) for check boxes, and Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) to read hand printed, structured forms. Unstructured forms have data that changes location on the page, and require a different set of technology for accuracy and success.