System and method for structuring speech recognized text into a pre-selected document format

• US 20040172245A1
• Filed: 02/28/2003
• Published: 09/02/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Rosen, Lee, Poust, Wade, Roe, Ed
• Granted Patent: US 7,958,443 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/235
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/174 Form filling; Merging
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/26 Speech to text systems G10L15/08 takes precedence

Abstract

A system for creating a structured report using a template having at least one predetermined heading and formatting data associated with each heading. The steps include recording a voice file, creating a speech recognized text file corresponding to the voice file, identifying the location of each heading in the text file, and the text corresponding thereto, populating the template with the identified text corresponding to each heading, and formatting the populated template to create the structured report.

Claims

1. A system comprising the steps of:

creating a template having a user-defined format having at least one predetermined heading;

selecting a voice file and a corresponding speech recognized text file;

identifying the location of each heading in the text file, and the text corresponding thereto; and

populating the template with the identified text corresponding to each heading.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the identifying step comprises an automatic correction step in which a computer automatically locates and marks each heading in the speech recognized text file.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the identifying step further comprises a manual correction step in which a user locates an unmarked heading in the speech recognized text file and marks each unmarked heading using a hot key corresponding to each heading.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising converting the populated template into a word processing document.

5. The system of claim 4, further comprising formatting the word processing document to create a final report.

6. The system of claim 5, further comprising returning the final report to the creator of the voice file.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the template is created by a template wizard.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the user-defined format has a corresponding hot key associated with each heading.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the user-defined format has formatting data corresponding to each heading.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the formatting data is selected from the group consisting of font, font size, bolding, underlining, italics, alignment, and any combinations thereof.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein each step is executed using a single software program.

12. A method for creating a structured report using a template having at least one predetermined heading, comprising the steps of:

recording a voice file;

creating a speech recognized text file corresponding to the voice file;

identifying the location of each heading in the text file, and the text corresponding thereto; and

populating the template with the identified text corresponding to each heading;

formatting the populated template to create the structured report.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the identifying step comprises automatically marking each heading in the text file.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the identifying step further comprises manually marking an unmarked heading in the text file using a hot key corresponding to the desired heading.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the template has formatting data associated with each heading.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the formatting data is selected from the group consisting of font, font size, bolding, underlining, italics, alignment, and any combinations thereof.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the identifying step comprises an automatic correction step in which a computer automatically locates and marks each heading in the speech recognized text file.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the identifying step further comprises a manual correction step in which a user locates an unmarked heading in the speech recognized text file and marks each unmarked heading using a hot key corresponding to each heading.